Pearl-Fishing; Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words; Second Series

by Charles Dickens

The Publisher’s Notice.

THE large demand for the First Series of this publication, has confirmed the publishers in their opinion of its worth and its adaptability to meet the wants and tastes of the reading public, and induced them to issue, in rapid succession, the present volume, which will be found not less interesting and worthy of attention.

The publishers also announce their intention of continuing this series, which has been received with so much public favor.

June, 1854.

Contents.

		Page
[I.]	—The Young Advocate	[7]
[II.]	—The Last of a Long Line	[33]
[III.]	—The Gentleman Beggar	[107]
[IV.]	—Evil is Wrought by Want of Thought	[130]
[V.]	—Bed	[167]
[VI.]	—The Home of Woodruffe the Gardener	[184]
[VII.]	—The Water-Drops	[287]
[VIII.]	—An Excellent Opportunity	[325]

I.
The Young Advocate.

ANTOINE DE CHAULIEU was the son of a poor gentleman of Normandy, with a long genealogy, a short rent-roll, and a large family. Jacques Rollet was the son of a brewer, who did not know who his grandfather was; but he had a long purse and only two children. As these youths flourished in the early days of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and were near neighbors, they naturally hated each other. Their enmity commenced at school, where the delicate and refined De Chaulieu being the only gentilhomme among the scholars, was the favorite of the master (who was a bit of an aristocrat in his heart) although he was about the worst dressed boy in the establishment, and never had a sou to spend; while Jacques Rollet, sturdy and rough, with smart clothes and plenty of money, got flogged six days in the week, ostensibly for being stupid and not learning his lessons—which, indeed, he did not—but, in reality, for constantly quarrelling with and insulting De Chaulieu, who had not strength to cope with him. When they left the academy, the feud continued in all its vigor, and was fostered by a thousand little circumstances arising out of the state of the times, till a separation ensued in consequence of an aunt of Antoine de Chaulieu’s undertaking the expense of sending him to Paris to study the law, and of maintaining him there during the necessary period.

With the progress of events came some degree of reaction in favor of birth and nobility, and then Antoine, who had passed for the bar, began to hold up his head and endeavored to push his fortunes; but fate seemed against him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper; it is sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable acquisition to De Chaulieu, who had nothing. Neither was the fair Natalie indisposed to listen to his addresses; but her father could not be expected to countenance the suit of a gentleman, however well-born, who had not a ten-sous piece in the world, and whose prospects were a blank.

While the ambitious and love-sick young barrister was thus pining in unwelcome obscurity, his old acquaintance, Jacques Rollet, had been acquiring an undesirable notoriety. There was nothing really bad in Jacques’ disposition, but having been bred up a democrat, with a hatred of the nobility, he could not easily accommodate his rough humor to treat them with civility when it was no longer safe to insult them. The liberties he allowed himself whenever circumstances brought him into contact with the higher classes of society, had led him into many scrapes, out of which his father’s money had one way or another released him; but that source of safety had now failed. Old Rollet having been too busy with the affairs of the nation to attend to his business, had died insolvent, leaving his son with nothing but his own wits to help him out of future difficulties, and it was not long before their exercise was called for. Claudine Rollet, his sister, who was a very pretty girl, had attracted the attention of Mademoiselle de Bellefonds’ brother, Alphonso; and as he paid her more attention than from such a quarter was agreeable to Jacques, the young men had more than one quarrel on the subject, on which occasions they had each, characteristically, given vent to their enmity, the one in contemptuous monosyllables, and the other in a volley of insulting words. But Claudine had another lover more nearly of her own condition of life; this was Claperon, the deputy-governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she made acquaintance during one or two compulsory visits paid by her brother to that functionary; but Claudine, who was a bit of a coquette, though she did not altogether reject his suit, gave him little encouragement, so that betwixt hopes, and fears, and doubts, and jealousies, poor Claperon led a very uneasy kind of life.

Affairs had been for some time in this position, when, one fine morning, Alphonse de Bellefonds was not to be found in his chamber when his servant went to call him; neither had his bed been slept in. He had been observed to go out rather late on the preceding evening, but whether or not he had returned, nobody could tell. He had not appeared at supper, but that was too ordinary an event to awaken suspicion; and little alarm was excited till several hours had elapsed, when inquiries were instituted and a search commenced, which terminated in the discovery of his body, a good deal mangled, lying at the bottom of a pond which had belonged to the old brewery. Before any investigations had been made, every person had jumped to the conclusion that the young man had been murdered, and that Jacques Rollet was the assassin. There was a strong presumption in favor of that opinion, which further perquisitions tended to confirm. Only the day before, Jacques had been heard to threaten M. de Bellefonds with speedy vengeance. On the fatal evening, Alphonse and Claudine had been seen together in the neighborhood of the now dismantled brewery; and as Jacques, betwixt poverty and democracy, was in bad odor with the prudent and respectable part of society, it was not easy for him to bring witnesses to character, or prove an unexceptionable alibi. As for the Bellefonds and De Chaulieus, and the aristocracy in general, they entertained no doubt of his guilt; and finally, the magistrates coming to the same opinion, Jacques Rollet was committed for trial, and as a testimony of good will Antoine de Chaulieu was selected by the injured family to conduct the prosecution.

Here, at last, was the opportunity he had sighed for! So interesting a case, too, furnishing such ample occasion for passion, pathos, indignation! And how eminently fortunate that the speech which he set himself with ardor to prepare, would be delivered in the presence of the father and brother of his mistress, and perhaps of the lady herself! The evidence against Jacques, it is true, was altogether presumptive; there was no proof whatever that he had committed the crime; and for his own part he stoutly denied it. But Antoine de Chaulieu entertained no doubt of his guilt, and his speech was certainly well calculated to carry conviction into the bosom of others. It was of the highest importance to his own reputation that he should procure a verdict, and he confidently assured the afflicted and enraged family of the victim that their vengeance should be satisfied. Under these circumstances could anything be more unwelcome than a piece of intelligence that was privately conveyed to him late on the evening before the trial was to come on, which tended strongly to exculpate the prisoner, without indicating any other person as the criminal. Here was an opportunity lost. The first step of the ladder on which he was to rise to fame, fortune, and a wife, was slipping from under his feet!

Of course, so interesting a trial was anticipated with great eagerness by the public, and the court was crowded with all the beauty and fashion of Rouen. Though Jacques Rollet persisted in asserting his innocence, founding his defence chiefly on circumstances which were strongly corroborated by the information that had reached De Chaulieu the preceding evening,—he was convicted.

In spite of the very strong doubts he privately entertained respecting the justice of the verdict, even De Chaulieu himself, in the first flush of success, amid a crowd of congratulating friends, and the approving smiles of his mistress, felt gratified and happy; his speech had, for the time being, not only convinced others, but himself; warmed with his own eloquence, he believed what he said. But when the glow was over, and he found himself alone, he did not feel so comfortable. A latent doubt of Rollet’s guilt now burnt strongly in his mind, and he felt that the blood of the innocent would be on his head. It is true there was yet time to save the life of the prisoner, but to admit Jacques innocent, was to take the glory out of his own speech, and turn the sting of his argument against himself. Besides, if he produced the witness who had secretly given him the information, he should be self-condemned, for he could not conceal that he had been aware of the circumstance before the trial.

Matters having gone so far, therefore, it was necessary that Jacques Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning the guillotine was erected in the court-yard of the jail, three criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket, which were presently afterwards, with the trunks that had been attached to them, buried in a corner of the cemetery.

Antoine de Chaulieu was now fairly started in his career, and his success was as rapid as the first step towards it had been tardy. He took a pretty apartment in the Hôtel de Marbœuf, Rue Grange-Batelière, and in a short time was looked upon as one of the most rising young advocates in Paris. His success in one line brought him success in another; he was soon a favorite in society, and an object of interest to speculating mothers; but his affections still adhered to his old love Natalie de Bellefonds, whose family now gave their assent to the match—at least, prospectively—a circumstance which furnished such an additional incentive to his exertions, that in about two years from the date of his first brilliant speech, he was in a sufficiently flourishing condition to offer the young lady a suitable home. In anticipation of the happy event, he engaged and furnished a suite of apartments in the Rue du Helder; and as it was necessary that the bride should come to Paris to provide her trousseau, it was agreed that the wedding should take place there, instead of at Bellefonds, as had been first projected; an arrangement the more desirable, that a press of business rendered M. de Chaulieu’s absence from Paris inconvenient.

Brides and bridegrooms in France, except of the very high classes, are not much in the habit of making those honeymoon excursions so universal in this country. A day spent in visiting Versailles, or St. Cloud, or even the public places of the city, is generally all that precedes the settling down into the habits of daily life. In the present instance St. Denis was selected, from the circumstance of Natalie having a younger sister at school there; and also because she had a particular desire to see the Abbey.

The wedding was to take place on a Thursday; and on the Wednesday evening, having spent some hours most agreeably with Natalie, Antoine de Chaulieu returned to spend his last night in his bachelor apartments. His wardrobe and other small possessions, had already been packed up and sent to his future home; and there was nothing left in his room now, but his new wedding suit, which he inspected with considerable satisfaction before he undressed and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however, was somewhat slow to visit him; and the clock had struck one before he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was broad day-light; and his first thought was, had he overslept himself? He sat up in bed to look at the clock which was exactly opposite, and as he did so, in the large mirror over the fire-place, he perceived a figure standing behind him. As the dilated eyes met his own, he saw it was the face of Jacques Rollet. Overcome with horror he sunk back on his pillow, and it was some minutes before he ventured to look again in that direction; when he did so, the figure had disappeared.

The sudden revulsion of feeling such a vision was calculated to occasion in a man elate with joy, may be conceived! For some time after the death of his former foe, he had been visited by not unfrequent twinges of conscience; but of late, borne along by success, and the hurry of Parisian life, these unpleasant remembrances had grown rarer, till at length they had faded away altogether. Nothing had been further from his thoughts than Jacques Rollet, when he closed his eyes on the preceding night, nor when he opened them to that sun which was to shine on what he expected to be the happiest day of his life! Where were the high-strung nerves now! The elastic frame! The bounding heart!

Heavily and slowly he arose from his bed, for it was time to do so; and with a trembling hand and quivering knees, he went through the processes of the toilet, gashing his cheek with the razor, and spilling the water over his well-polished boots. When he was dressed, scarcely venturing to cast a glance in the mirror as he passed it, he quitted the room and descended the stairs, taking the key of the door with him for the purpose of leaving it with the porter; the man, however, being absent, he laid it on the table in his lodge, and with a relaxed and languid step proceeded on his way to the church, where presently arrived the fair Natalie and her friends. How difficult it was now to look happy with that pallid face and extinguished eye!

“How pale you are! Has anything happened? You are surely ill?” were the exclamations that met him on all sides. He tried to carry it off as well as he could, but felt that the movements he would have wished to appear alert were only convulsive; and that the smiles with which he attempted to relax his features, were but distorted grimaces. However, the church was not the place for further inquiries; and while Natalie gently pressed his hand in token of sympathy, they advanced to the altar, and the ceremony was performed; after which they stepped into the carriages waiting at the door, and drove to the apartments of Madame de Bellefonds, where an elegant déjeuner was prepared.

“What ails you, my dear husband?” inquired Natalie, as soon as they were alone.

“Nothing, love,” he replied; “nothing, I assure you, but a restless night and a little overwork, in order that I might have to-day free to enjoy my happiness!”

“Are you quite sure? Is there nothing else?”

“Nothing, indeed; and pray don’t take notice of it, it only makes me worse!”

Natalie was not deceived, but she saw that what he said was true; notice made him worse; so she contented herself with observing him quietly, and saying nothing; but, as he felt she was observing him, she might almost better have spoken; words are often less embarrassing things than too curious eyes.

When they reached Madame de Bellefonds’ he had the same sort of questioning and scrutiny to undergo, till he grew quite impatient under it, and betrayed a degree of temper altogether unusual with him. Then everybody looked astonished; some whispered their remarks, and others expressed them by their wondering eyes, till his brow knit, and his pallid cheeks became flushed with anger. Neither could he divert attention by eating; his parched mouth would not allow him to swallow anything but liquids, of which, however, he indulged in copious libations; and it was an exceeding relief to him when the carriage, which was to convey them to St. Denis, being announced, furnished an excuse for hastily leaving the table. Looking at his watch, he declared it was late; and Natalie, who saw how eager he was to be gone, threw her shawl over her shoulders, and bidding her friends good morning, they hurried away.

It was a fine sunny day in June; and as they drove along the crowded boulevards, and through the Porte St. Denis, the young bride and bridegroom, to avoid each others eyes, affected to be gazing out of the windows; but when they reached that part of the road where there was nothing but trees on each side, they felt it necessary to draw in their heads, and make an attempt at conversation, De Chaulieu put his arm round his wife’s waist, and tried to rouse himself from his depression; but it had by this time so reacted upon her, that she could not respond to his efforts, and thus the conversation languished, till both felt glad when they reached their destination, which would, at all events, furnish them something to talk about.

Having quitted the carriage, and ordered a dinner at the Hôtel de l’Abbaye, the young couple proceeded to visit Mademoiselle Hortense de Bellefonds, who was overjoyed to see her sister and new brother-in-law, and doubly so when she found that they had obtained permission to take her out to spend the afternoon with them. As there is little to be seen at St. Denis but the Abbey, on quitting that part of it devoted to education, they proceeded to visit the church, with its various objects of interest; and as De Chaulieu’s thoughts were now forced into another direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, till the brazen doors were open which admitted them to the Royal vault. Satisfied, at length, with what they had seen, they began to think of returning to the inn, the more especially as De Chaulieu, who had not eaten a morsel of food since the previous evening, owned to being hungry; so they directed their steps to the door, lingering here and there as they went, to inspect a monument or a painting, when, happening to turn his head aside to see if his wife, who had stopt to take a last look at the tomb of King Dagobert, was following, he beheld with horror the face of Jacques Rollet appearing from behind a column! At the same instant his wife joined him, and took his arm, inquiring if he was not very much delighted with what he had seen. He attempted to say yes, but the word would not be forced out; and staggering out of the door, he alleged that a sudden faintness had overcome him.

They conducted him to the Hôtel, but Natalie now became seriously alarmed; and well she might. His complexion looked ghastly, his limbs shook, and his features bore an expression of indescribable horror and anguish. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a change in the gay, witty, prosperous De Chaulieu, who, till that morning, seemed not to have a care in the world? For, plead illness as he might, she felt certain, from the expression of his features, that his sufferings were not of the body but of the mind; and, unable to imagine any reason for such extraordinary manifestations, of which she had never before seen a symptom, but a sudden aversion to herself, and regret for the step he had taken, her pride took the alarm, and, concealing the distress she really felt, she began to assume a haughty and reserved manner towards him, which he naturally interpreted into an evidence of anger and contempt. The dinner was placed upon the table, but De Chaulieu’s appetite, of which he had lately boasted, was quite gone, nor was his wife better able to eat. The young sister alone did justice to the repast; but although the bridegroom could not eat, he could swallow champagne in such copious draughts, that ere long the terror and remorse that the apparition of Jacques Rollet had awakened in his breast were drowned in intoxication. Amazed and indignant, poor Natalie sat silently observing this elect of her heart, till overcome with disappointment and grief, she quitted the room with her sister, and retired to another apartment, where she gave free vent to her feelings in tears.

After passing a couple of hours in confidences and lamentations, they recollected that the hours of liberty granted, as an especial favor, to Mademoiselle Hortense, had expired; but ashamed to exhibit her husband in his present condition to the eyes of strangers, Natalie prepared to re-conduct her to the Maison Royale herself. Looking into the dining-room as they passed, they saw De Chaulieu lying on a sofa fast asleep, in which state he continued when his wife returned. At length, however, the driver of their carriage begged to know if Monsieur and Madame were ready to return to Paris, and it became necessary to arouse him. The transitory effects of the champagne had now subsided; but when De Chaulieu recollected what had happened, nothing could exceed his shame and mortification. So engrossing indeed were these sensations that they quite overpowered his previous one, and, in his present vexation, he, for the moment, forgot his fears. He knelt at his wife’s feet, begged her pardon a thousand times, swore that he adored her, and declared that the illness and the effect of the wine had been purely the consequences of fasting and over-work. It was not the easiest thing in the world to re-assure a woman whose pride, affection, and taste, had been so severely wounded; but Natalie tried to believe, or to appear to do so, and a sort of reconciliation ensued, not quite sincere on the part of the wife, and very humbling on the part of the husband. Under these circumstances it was impossible that he should recover his spirits or facility of manner; his gaiety was forced, his tenderness constrained; his heart was heavy within him; and ever and anon the source whence all this disappointment and woe had sprung would recur to his perplexed and tortured mind.

Thus mutually pained and distrustful, they returned to Paris, which they reached about nine o’clock. In spite of her depression, Natalie, who had not seen her new apartments, felt some curiosity about them, whilst De Chaulieu anticipated a triumph in exhibiting the elegant home he had prepared for her. With some alacrity, therefore, they stepped out of the carriage, the gates of the Hôtel were thrown open, the concierge rang the bell which announced to the servants that their master and mistress had arrived, and whilst these domestics appeared above, holding lights over the balustrades, Natalie, followed by her husband, ascended the stairs. But when they reached the landing-place of the first flight, they saw the figure of a man standing in a corner as if to make way for them; the flash from above fell upon his face, and again Antoine de Chaulieu recognized the features of Jacques Rollet!

From the circumstance of his wife’s preceding him, the figure was not observed by De Chaulieu till he was lifting his foot to place it on the top stair: the sudden shock caused him to miss the step, and, without uttering a sound, he fell back, and never stopped till he reached the stones at the bottom. The screams of Natalie brought the concierge from below and the maids from above, and an attempt was made to raise the unfortunate man from the ground; but with cries of anguish he besought them to desist.

“Let me,” he said, “die here! What a fearful vengeance is thine! Oh, Natalie, Natalie!” he exclaimed to his wife, who was kneeling beside him, “to win fame, and fortune, and yourself, I committed a dreadful crime! With lying words I argued away the life of a fellow-creature, whom, whilst I uttered them, I half believed to be innocent; and now, when I have attained all I desired, and reached the summit of my hopes, the Almighty has sent him back upon the earth to blast me with the sight. Three times this day—three times this day! Again! again!”—and as he spoke, his wild and dilated eyes fixed themselves on one of the individuals that surrounded him.

“He is delirious,” said they.

“No,” said the stranger! “What he says is true enough,—at least in part;” and bending over the expiring man, he added, “May Heaven forgive you, Antoine de Chaulieu! I was not executed; one who well knew my innocence saved my life. I may name him, for he is beyond the reach of the law now,—it was Claperon, the jailor, who loved Claudine, and had himself killed Alphonse de Bellefonds from jealousy. An unfortunate wretch had been several years in the jail for a murder committed during the frenzy of a fit of insanity. Long confinement had reduced him to idiocy. To save my life Claperon substituted the senseless being for me, on the scaffold, and he was executed in my stead. He has quitted the country, and I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth ever since that time. At length I obtained, through the assistance of my sister, the situation of concierge in the Hôtel Marbœuf, in the Rue Grange-Batelière. I entered on my new place yesterday evening, and was desired to awaken the gentleman on the third floor at seven o’clock. When I entered the room to do so, you were asleep, but before I had time to speak you awoke, and I recognized your features in the glass. Knowing that I could not vindicate my innocence if you chose to seize me, I fled, and seeing an omnibus starting for St. Denis, I got on it with a vague idea of getting on to Calais, and crossing the Channel to England. But having only a franc or two in my pocket, or indeed in the world, I did not know how to procure the means of going forward; and whilst I was lounging about the place, forming first one plan and then another, I saw you in the church, and concluding you were in pursuit of me, I thought the best way of eluding your vigilance was to make my way back to Paris as fast as I could; so I set off instantly, and walked all the way; but having no money to pay my night’s lodging, I came here to borrow a couple of livres of my sister Claudine, who lives in the fifth story.”

“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the dying man; “that sin is off my soul! Natalie, dear wife, farewell! Forgive! forgive all!”

These were the last words he uttered; the priest, who had been summoned in haste, held up the cross before his failing sight; a few strong convulsions shook the poor bruised and mangled frame; and then all was still.

And thus ended the Young Advocate’s Wedding Day.

II.
The Last of a Long Line.

SIR ROGER ROCKVILLE of Rockville was the last of a very long line. It extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first known ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some mark, either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the Americans would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the Roll of Battle Abbey, he was, of course, not of a very high Norman extraction; but he had done enough, it seems, in the way of knocking down Saxons, to place himself on a considerable eminence in this kingdom. The centre of his domains was conspicuous far over the country, through a high range of rock overhanging one of the sweetest rivers in England. On one hand lay a vast tract of rich marsh land, capable, as society advanced, of being converted into meadows; and on the other, as extensive moorlands, finely undulating, and abounding with woods and deer.

Here the original Sir Roger built his castle on the summit of the range of rock, with huts for his followers; and became known directly all over the country of Sir Roger de Rockville, or Sir Roger of the hamlet on the Rock. Sir Roger, no doubt, was a mighty hunter before the lord of the feudal district: it is certain that his descendants were. For generations they led a jolly life at Rockville, and were always ready to exchange the excitement of the chase for a bit of the civil war. Without that the country would have grown dull, and ale and venison lost their flavor. There was no gay London in those days, and a good brisk skirmish with their neighbors in helm and hauberk was the way of spending their season. It was their parliamentary debate, and was necessary to stir their blood. Protection and Free Trade were as much the great topics of interest as they are now, only they did not trouble themselves so much about Corn-bills. Their bills were of good steel, and their protective measures were arrows a cloth-yard long. Protection meant a good suit of mail; and a castle with its duly prescribed moats, bastions, portcullises, and donjon keep. Free Trade was a lively inroad into the neighboring baron’s lands, and the importation thence of goodly herds and flocks. Foreign cattle for home consumption was as striking an article in their markets as in ours, only the blows were expended on one another’s heads, instead of the heads of foreign bullocks—that is, bullocks from over the Welch or Scotch Marches, as from beyond the next brook.

Thus lived the Rockvilles for ages. In all the iron combats of those iron times they took care to have their quota. Whether it was Stephen against Matilda, or Richard against his father, or John against the barons; whether it were York or Lancaster, or Tudor or Stuart. The Rockvilles were to be found in the mêlée, and winning power and lands. So long as it required only stalwart frames and stout blows, no family cut a more conspicuous figure. The Rockvilles were at Bosworth Field. The Rockvilles fought in Ireland under Elizabeth. The Rockvilles were staunch defenders of the cause in the war of Charles I. with his Parliament. The Rockvilles even fought for James II. at the Boyne, when three-fourths of the most loyal of the English nobility and gentry had deserted him in disgust and indignation. But from that hour they had been less conspicuous.

The opposition to the successful party, that of William of Orange, of course brought them into disgrace; and though they were never molested on that account, they retired to their estate, and found it convenient to be as unobtrusive as possible. Thenceforward you heard no more of the Rockvilles in the national annals. They became only of consequence in their own district. They acted as magistrates. They served as high sheriffs. They were a substantial county family, and nothing more. Education and civilization advanced; a wider and very different field of action and ambition opened upon the aristocracy of England. Our fleets and armies abroad, our legislature at home, law and the church, presented brilliant paths to the ambition of those thirsting for distinction, and the good things that follow it. But somehow the Rockvilles did not expand with this expansion. So long as it required only a figure of six feet high, broad shoulders, and a strong arm, they were a great and conspicuous race. But when the head became the member most in request, they ceased to go ahead. Younger sons, it is true, served in army and in navy, and filled the family pulpit, but they produced no generals, no admirals, no arch-bishops. The Rockvilles of Rockville were very conservative, very exclusive, and very stereotype. Other families grew poor, and enriched themselves again by marrying plebeian heiresses. New families grew up out of plebeian blood into greatness, and intermingled the vigor of their fresh earth with the attenuated aristocratic soil. Men of family became great lawyers, great statesmen, great prelates, and even great poets and philosophers. The Rockvilles remained high, proud, bigoted, and borné.

The Rockvilles married Rockvilles, or their first cousins, the Craigvilles, simply to prevent property going out of the family. They kept the property together. They did not lose an acre, and they were a fine, tall, solemn race—and nothing more. What ailed them?

If you saw Sir Roger Rockville,—for there was an eternal Sir Roger—filling his office of high sheriff,—he had a very fine carriage, and a very fine retinue in the most approved and splendid of antique costumes;—if you saw him sitting on the bench at quarter sessions, he was a tall, stately, and solemn man. If you saw Lady Rockville shopping, in her handsome carriage, with very handsomely attired servants; saw her at the county ball, or on the race-stand, she was a tall, aristocratic, and stately lady. That was in the last generation—the present could boast of no Lady Rockville.

Great outward respect was shown to the Rockvilles on account of the length of their descent, and the breadth of their acres. They were always, when any stranger asked about them, declared, with a serious and important air, to be a very ancient, honorable, and substantial family. “Oh! a great family are the Rockvilles, a very great family.”

But if you came to close quarters with the members of this great and highly distinguished family, you soon found yourself fundamentally astonished; you had a sensation come over you, as if you were trying, like Moses, to draw water from a rock without his delegated power. There was a goodly outside of things before you, but nothing came of it. You talked, hoping to get talking in return, but you got little more than “noes” and “yeses,” and “oh! indeeds!” and “reallys,” and sometimes not even that, but a certain look of aristocratic dignity or dignification, that was meant to serve for all answers. There was a sort of resting on aristocratic oars or “sculls,” that were not to be too vulgarly handled. There was a feeling impressed on you, that eight hundred years of descent and ten thousand a-year in landed income did not trouble themselves with the trifling things that gave distinction to lesser people—such as literature, fine arts, politics, and general knowledge. These were very well for those who had nothing else to pride themselves on, but for the Rockvilles—oh! certainly they were by no means requisite.

In fact, you found yourself, with a little variation, in the predicament of Cowper’s people,

—— who spent their lives
In dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing tired of drawing nothing up.

Who hasn’t often come across these “dry wells” of society; solemn gulfs out of which you can pump nothing up? You know them; they are at your elbow every day in large and brilliant companies, and defy the best sucking bucket ever invented to extract anything from them. But the Rockvilles were each and all of this adust description. It was a family feature, and they seemed, if either, rather proud of it. They must be so; for proud they were, amazing proud; and they had nothing besides to be proud of, except their acres, and their ancestors.

But the fact was, they could not help it. It was become organic. They had acted the justice of peace, maintained the constitution against upstarts and manufacturers, signed warrants, supported the church and the house of correction, committed poachers, and then rested on the dignity of their ancestors for so many generations, that their skulls, brains, constitutions, and nervous systems, were all so completely moulded into that shape and baked into that mould, that a Rockville would be a Rockville to the end of time, if God and Nature would have allowed it. But such things wear out. The American Indians and the Australian nations wear out; they are not progressive, and as Nature abhors a vacuum, she does not forget the vacuum wherever it may be, whether in a hot desert, or in a cold and stately Rockville;—a very ancient, honorable, and substantial family, that lies fallow till the thinking faculty literally dies out.

For several generations there had been symptoms of decay about the Rockville family. Not in its property, that was as large as ever; not in their personal stature and physical aspect. The Rockvilles continued, as they always had been, a tall and not bad-looking family. But they grew gradually less prolific. For a hundred and fifty years past there had seldom been more than two, or at most three, children. There had generally been an heir to the estate, and another to the family pulpit, and sometimes a daughter married to some neighboring squire. But Sir Roger’s father had been an only child, and Sir Roger himself was an only child. The danger of extinction to the family, apparent as it was, had never induced Sir Roger to marry. At the time that we are turning our attention upon him, he had reached the mature age of sixty. Nobody believed that Sir Roger now would marry; he was the last, and likely to be, of his line.

It is worth while here to take a glance at Sir Roger and his estate. They bore a strange contrast. The one bore all the signs of progress, the other of a stereotyped feudality. The estate which in the days of the first Sir Roger de Rockville had been half morass and half wilderness, was now cultivated to the pitch of British agricultural science. The marshlands beyond the river were one splendid expanse of richest meadows, yielding a rental of four solid pounds per acre. Over hill and dale on this side for miles, where formerly ran wild deer, and grew wild woodlands or furze-bushes, now lay excellent farms and hamlets, and along the ridge of the ancient cliffs rose the most magnificent woods. Woods, too, clothed the steep-hill sides, and swept down to the noble river, their very boughs hanging far out over its clear and rapid waters. In the midst of these fine woods stood Rockville Hall, the family seat of the Rockvilles. It reared its old brick walls above the towering mass of elms, and travellers at a distance recognized it for what it was, the mansion of an ancient and wealthy family.

The progress of England in arts, science, commerce, and manufacture, had carried Sir Roger’s estate along with it. It was full of active and moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences. How lucky it would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same.

But amid this estate there was Sir Roger solitary, and the last of the line. He had grown well enough—there was nothing stunted about him, so far as you could see on the surface. In stature, he exceeded six feet. His colossal elms could not boast of a properer relative growth. He was as large a landlord, and as tall a justice of the peace, as you could desire; but, unfortunately, he was, after all, only the shell of a man. Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was hollow. There was a man, just with the rather awkward deficiency of a soul.

And it were no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come about. The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family. What! that most ancient, honorable, and substantial family, suffer any of the common earth of humanity to gather about its roots! The Rockvilles were so careful of their good blood, that they never allied it to any but blood as pure and inane as their own. Their elms flourished in the rotten earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large crops of corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigor from the rich heap of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into their race. The Rockvilles needed nothing; they had all that an ancient, honorable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no need to study at school—why should they? They did not want to get on. The Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world—why should they? They had a large estate. So the Rockville soul, unused from generation to generation, grew—

Fine by degrees and spiritually less,

till it tapered off into nothing.

Look at the last of a long line in the midst of his fine estate. Tall he was, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a bowing of his head on one side, as if he had been accustomed to stand under the low boughs of his woods, and peer after intruders. And that was precisely the fact. His features were thin and sharp; his nose prominent and keen in its character; his eyes small, black, and peering like a mole’s, or a hungry swine’s. Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, after consulting his clerk, a good lawyer,—and looked up to by the neighboring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little, he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and of a very ancient family.

With ten thousand a-year, and his rental rising, he was still, however, a man of overwhelming cares. What mattered a fine estate if all the world was against him? And Sir Roger firmly believed that he stood in that predicament. He had grown up to regard the world as full of little besides upstarts, radicals, manufacturers, and poachers. All were banded, in his belief, against the landed interest. It demanded all the energy of his very small faculties to defend himself and the world against them.

Unfortunately for his peace, a large manufacturing town had sprung up within a couple of miles of him. He could see its red-brick walls, and its red-tiled roofs, and its tall smoke-vomiting chimneys, growing and extending over the slopes beyond the river. It was to him the most irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of the ancient institutions and the landed interests of England? Sir Roger had passed through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to parliament. They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such occasions than they did to the meanest creature living. Reverence for ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying tribe. There were master manufacturers there actually that looked and talked as big as himself, and entre nous, a vast deal more cleverly. The people talked of rights and franchises, and freedom of speech and of conscience, in a way that was really frightful. Then they were given most inveterately to running out in whole and everlasting crowds on Sundays and holidays into the fields and woods; and as there was no part of the neighborhood half so pleasant as the groves and river banks of Rockville, they came swarming up there in crowds that were enough to drive any man of acres frantic.

Unluckily, there were roads all about Rockville; foot roads, and high roads, and bridle roads. There was a road up the river side, all the way to Rockville woods, and when it reached them, it divided like a fork, and one prong or footpath led straight up a magnificent grove of a mile long, ending close to the hall; and another ran all along the river side, under the hills and branches of the wood.

Oh, delicious were these woods! In the river there were islands, which were covered in summer with the greenest grass, and the freshest of willows, and the clear waters rushed around them in the most inviting manner imaginable. And there were numbers of people extremely ready to accept this delectable invitation of these waters. There they came in fine weather, and as these islands were only separated from the main-land by a little and very shallow stream, it was delightful for lovers to get across—with laughter, and treading on stepping stones, and slipping off the stepping-stones up to the ankles into the cool brook, and pretty screams, and fresh laughter, and then landing on those sunny, and to them really enchanted, islands. And then came fishermen, solitary fishermen, and fishermen in rows; fishermen lying in the flowery grass, with fragrant meadow-sweet and honey-breathing clover all about their ears; and fishermen standing in file, as if they were determined to clear all the river of fish in one day. And there were other lovers, and troops of loiterers, and shouting roysterers, going along under the boughs of the wood, and following the turns of that most companionable of rivers. And there were boats going up and down; boats full of young people, all holiday finery and mirth, and boats with duck-hunters and other, to Sir Roger, detestable marauders, with guns and dogs, and great bottles of beer. In the fine grove, on summer days, there might be found hundreds of people. There were pic-nic parties, fathers and mothers with whole families of children, and a grand promenade of the delighted artisans and their wives or sweethearts.

In the times prior to the sudden growth of the neighboring town, Great Stockington, and to the simultaneous development of the love-of-nature principle in the Stockingtonians, nothing had been thought of all these roads. The roads were well enough till they led to these inroads. Then Sir Roger aroused himself. This must be changed. The roads must be stopped. Nothing was easier to his fancy. His fellow-justices, Sir Benjamin Bullockshed and Squire Sheepshank, had asked his aid to stop the like nuisances, and it had been done at once. So Sir Roger put up notices all about, that the roads were to be stopped by an Order of Session, and these notices were signed, as required by law, by their worships of Bullockshed and Sheepshank. But Sir Roger soon found that it was one thing to stop a road leading from One-man-Town to Lonely Lodge, and another to attempt to stop those from Great Stockington to Rockville.

On the very first Sunday after the exhibition of those notice-boards, there was a ferment in the grove of Rockville, as if all the bees in the county were swarming there, with all the wasps and Hornets to boot. Great crowds were collected before each of these obnoxious placards, and the amount of curses vomited forth against them was really shocking for any day, but more especially for a Sunday. Presently there was a rush at them; they were torn down, and simultaneously pitched into the river. There were great crowds swarming all about Rockville all that day, and with looks so defiant that Sir Roger more than once contemplated sending off for the Yeoman Cavalry to defend his house, which he seriously thought in danger.

But so far from being intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods, now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the offenders, attended with all the maledictions of the insulted majesty of the law. No notice was taken of this, but the whole of Great Stockington was in a buzz and an agitation. There were posters plastered all over the walls of the town, four times as large as Sir Roger’s notices, in this style:—

“Englishmen! your dearest rights are menaced! The Woods of Rockville, your ancient, rightful, and enchanting resorts, are to be closed to you. Stockingtonians! the eyes of the world are upon you. ‘Awake! arise! or be forever fallen!’ England expects every man to do his duty! And your duty is to resist and defy the grasping soil-lords, to seize on your ancient Patrimony!”

“Patrimony! Ancient and rightful resort of Rockville!” Sir Roger was astounded at the audacity of this upstart, plebeian race. “What! they actually claimed Rockville, the heritage of a hundred successive Rockvilles, as their own. Sir Roger determined to carry it to the Sessions; and at the Sessions was a magnificent muster of all his friends. There was Sir Roger himself in the chair; and on either hand, a prodigious row of county squirearchy. There was Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, and Sir Thomas Tenterhook, and all the squires,—Sheepshank, Ramsbottom, Turnbull, Otterbrook, and Swagsides. The Clerk of the Session read the notice for the closing of all the footpaths through the woods of Rockville, and declared that this notice had been duly, and for the required period publicly posted. The Stockingtonians protested by their able lawyer Daredeville, against any order for the closing of these ancient woods—the inestimable property of the public.

“Property of the public!” exclaimed Sir Roger. “Property of the public!” echoed the multitudinous voices of indignant Bullocksheds, Tenterhooks, and Ramsbottoms. “Why, Sir, do you dispute the right of Sir Roger Rockville to his own estate?”

“By no means;” replied the undaunted Daredeville; “the estate of Rockville is unquestionably the property of the honorable baronet, Sir Roger Rockville; but the roads through it are the as unquestionable property of the public.”

The whole bench looked at itself; that is, at each other, in wrathful astonishment. The swelling in the diaphragms of the squires Otterbrook, Turnbull, and Swagsides, and all the rest of the worshipful row, was too big to admit of utterance. Only Sir Roger himself burst forth with an abrupt— “Impudent fellows! But I’ll see them —— first!”

“Grant the order!” said Sir Benjamin Bullockshed; and the whole bench nodded assent. The able lawyer Daredeville retired with a pleasant smile. He saw an agreeable prospect of plenty of grist to his mill. Sir Roger was rich, and so was Great Stockington. He rubbed his hands, not in the least like a man defeated, and thought to himself, “Let them go at it—all right.”

The next day the placards on the Rockville estate were changed for others bearing “Stopped by Order of Sessions!” and alongside of them were huge carefully painted boards, denouncing on all trespassers prosecutions according to law. The same evening came a prodigious invasion of Stockingtonians—tore all the boards and placards down, and carried them on their shoulders to Great Stockington, singing as they went, “See, the Conquering Heroes come!” They set them up in the centre of the Stockington market-place, and burnt them, along with an effigy of Sir Roger Rockville.

That was grist at once to the mill of the able lawyer Daredeville. He looked on, and rubbed his hands. Warrants were speedily issued by the Baronets of Bullockshed and Tenterhook, for the apprehension of the individuals who had been seen carrying off the notice-boards, for larceny, and against a number of others for trespass. There was plenty of work for Daredeville and his brethren of the robe; but it all ended, after the flying about of sundry mandamuses and assize trials, in Sir Roger finding that though Rockville was his, the roads through it were the public’s.

As Sir Roger drove homeward from the assize, which finally settled the question of these footpaths, he heard the bells in all the steeples of Great Stockington burst forth with a grand peal of triumph. He closed fast the windows of his fine old carriage, and sunk into a corner; but he could not drown the intolerable sound. “But,” said he, “I’ll stop their pic-nic-ing. I’ll stop their fishing. I’ll have hold of them for trespassing and poaching!” There was war henceforth between Rockville and Great Stockington.

On the very next Sunday there came literally thousands of the jubilant Stockingtonians to Rockville. They had brought baskets, and were for dining, and drinking success to all footpaths. But in the great grove there were keepers, and watchers, who warned them to keep the path, that narrow well-worn line up the middle of the grove. “What! were they not to sit on the grass?”—“No!”—“What! were they not to pic-nic?”—“No! not there!”

The Stockingtonians felt a sudden damp on their spirits. But the river bank! The cry was. “To the river bank! There they would pic-nic.” The crowd rushed away down the wood, but on the river bank they found a whole regiment of watchers, who pointed again to the narrow line of footpath, and told them not to trespass beyond it. But the islands! they went over to the islands. But there too were Sir Roger’s forces, who warned them back! There was no road there—- all found there would be trespassers, and be duly punished.

The Stockingtonians discovered that their triumph was not quite so complete as they had flattered themselves. The footpaths were theirs, but that was all. Their ancient license was at an end. If they came there, there was no more fishing; if they came in crowds, there was no more pic-nic-ing; if they walked through the woods in numbers, they must keep to Indian file, or they were summoned before the county magistrates for trespass, and were soundly fined; and not even the able Daredeville would undertake to defend them.

The Stockingtonians were chop-fallen, but they were angry and dogged; and they thronged up to the village and the front of the hall. They filled the little inn in the hamlet—they went by scores, and roving all over the churchyard, read epitaphs

That teach the rustic moralists to die,

but don’t teach them to give up their old indulgences very good-humoredly. They went and sat in rows on the old churchyard wall, opposite to the very windows of the irate Sir Roger. They felt themselves beaten, and Sir Roger felt himself beaten. True, he could coerce them to the keeping of the footpaths—but, then, they had the footpaths! True, thought the Stockingtonians, we have the footpaths, but then the pic-nic-ing, and the fishing, and the islands! The Stockingtonians were full of sullen wrath, and Sir Roger was—oh, most expressive old Saxon phrase—HAIRSORE! Yes, he was one universal wound of vexation and jealousy of his rights. Every hair in his body was like a pin sticking into him. Come within a dozen yards of him; nay, at the most, blow on him, and he was excruciated—you rubbed his sensitive hairs at a furlong’s distance.

The next Sunday the people found the churchyard locked up, except during service, when beadles walked there, and desired them not to loiter and disturb the congregation, closing the gates, and showing them out like a flock of sheep the moment the service was over. This was fuel to the already boiling blood of Stockington. The week following, what was their astonishment to find the much frequented inn gone! it was actually gone! not a trace of it; but the spot where it had stood for ages, turfed, planted with young spruce trees, and fenced off with post and rail! The exasperated people now launched forth an immensity of fulminations against the churl Sir Roger, and a certain number of them resolved to come and seat themselves in the street of the hamlet and there dine; but a terrific thunderstorm, which seemed in league with Sir Roger, soon routed them, drenched them through, and on attempting to seek shelter in the cottages, the poor people said they were very sorry, but it was as much as their holdings were worth, and they dare not admit them.

Sir Roger had triumphed! It was all over with the old delightful days at Rockville. There was an end of pic-nic-ing, of fishing, and of roving in the islands. One sturdy disciple of Izaak Walton, indeed, dared to fling a line from the banks of Rockville grove, but Sir Roger came upon him and endeavored to seize him. The man coolly walked into the middle of the river, and, without a word, continued his fishing.

“Get out there!” exclaimed Sir Roger, “that is still on my property.” The man walked through the river to the other bank, where he knew that the land was rented by a farmer. “Give over,” shouted Sir Roger, “I tell you the water is mine.”

“Then,” said the fellow, “bottle it up, and be hanged to you! Don’t you see it is running away to Stockington?”

There was bad blood between Rockville and Stockington forever. Stockington was incensed, and Sir Roger was hairsore.

A new nuisance sprung up. The people of Stockington looked on the cottagers of Rockville as sunk in deepest darkness under such a man as Sir Roger and his cousin the vicar. They could not pic-nic, but they thought they could hold a camp-meeting; they could not fish for roach, but they thought they might for souls. Accordingly there assembled crowds of Stockingtonians on the green of Rockville, with a chair and a table, and a preacher with his head bound in a red handkerchief; and soon there was a sound of hymns, and a zealous call to come out of the darkness of the spiritual Babylon. But this was more than Sir Roger could bear; he rushed forth with all his servants, keepers, and cottagers, overthrew the table, and routing the assembly, chased them to the boundary of his estate.

The discomfited Stockingtonians now fulminated awful judgments on the unhappy Sir Roger, as a persecutor and a malignant. They dared not enter again on his parish, but they came to the very verge of it, and held weekly meetings on the highway, in which they sang and declaimed as loudly as possible, that the winds might bear their voices to Sir Roger’s ears.

To such a position was now reduced the last of the long line of Rockville. The spirit of a policeman had taken possession of him. He had keepers and watchers out on all sides, but that did not satisfy him. He was perpetually haunted with the idea that poachers were after his game, that trespassers were in his woods. His whole life was now spent in stealing to and fro in his fields and plantations, and prowling along his river side. He lurked under hedges, and watched for long hours under the forest trees. If any one had a curiosity to see Sir Roger, they had only to enter his fields by the wood side, and wander a few yards from the path, and he was almost sure to spring out over the hedge, and in angry tones demand their name and address. The descendant of the chivalrous and steel-clad De Rockvilles was sunk into a restless spy on his own ample property. There was but one idea in his mind—encroachment. It was destitute of all other furniture but the musty technicalities of warrants and commitments. There was a stealthy and skulking manner in everything that he did. He went to church on Sundays, but it was no longer by the grand iron gate opposite to his house, that stood generally with a large spider’s web woven over the lock, and several others in different corners of the fine iron tracery, bearing evidence of the long period since it had been opened. How different to the time when the Sir Roger and Lady of Rockville had had these gates thrown wide on a Sunday morning, and, with all their train of household servants at their back, with true antique dignity, marched with much proud humility into the house of God. Now, Sir Roger—the solitary, suspicious, undignified Sir Roger, the keeper and policeman of his own property—stole in at a little side gate from his paddock, and back the same way, wondering all the time whether there was not somebody in his pheasant preserves, or Sunday trespassers in his grove.

If you entered his house, it gave you as cheerless a feeling as its owner. There was the conservatory, so splendid with rich plants and flowers in his mother’s time—now a dusty receptacle of hampers, broken hand-glasses, and garden tools. These tools could never be used, for the gardens were grown wild. Tall grass grew in the walks, and the huge unpruned shrubs disputed the passage with you. In the wood above the gardens, reached by several flights of fine, but now moss-grown, steps, there stood a pavilion, once clearly very beautiful. It was now damp and ruinous—its walls covered with greenness and crawling insects. It was a great lurking-place of Sir Roger when on the watch for poachers.

The line of the Rockvilles was evidently running fast out. It had reached the extremity of imbecility and contempt—it must soon reach its close.

Sir Roger used to make his regular annual visit to town; but of late, when there, he had wandered restlessly about the streets, peeping into the shop-windows; and if it rained, standing under entries for hours together, till it was gone over. The habit of lurking and peering about, was upon him; and his feet bore him instinctively into those narrow and crowded alleys where swarm the poachers of the city—the trespassers and anglers in the game preserves and streams of humanity. He had lost all pleasures in his club; the most exciting themes of political life retained no piquancy for him. His old friends ceased to find any pleasure in him. He was become the driest of all dry wells. Poachers, and anglers, and Methodists, haunted the wretched purlieus of his fast fading-out mind, and he resolved to go to town no more. His whole nature was centred in his woods. He was forever on the watch; and when at Rockville again, if he heard a door clap when in bed, he thought it a gun in his woods, and started up, and was out with his keepers.

Of what value was that magnificent estate to him?—those superb woods; those finely-hanging cliffs; that clear and riant river coming travelling on, and taking a noble sweep below his windows,—that glorious expanse of neat verdant meadows stretching almost to Stockington, and enlivened by numerous herds of the most beautiful cattle—those old farms and shady lanes overhung with hazel and wild rose; the glittering brook, and the songs of woodland birds—what were they to that worn-out old man, that victim of the delusive doctrine of blood, of the man-trap of an hereditary name?

There the poet could come, and feel the presence of divinity in that noble scene, and hear sublime whispers in the trees, and create new heavens and earths from the glorious chaos of nature around him, and in one short hour live an empyrean of celestial life and love. There could come the very humblest children of the plebeian town, and feel a throb of exquisite delight pervade their bosoms at the sight of the very flowers on the sod, and see heaven in the infinite blue above them. And poor Sir Roger, the holder, but not the possessor of all, walked only in a region of sterility, with no sublimer ideas than poachers and trespassers—no more rational enjoyment than the brute indulgence of hunting like a ferret, and seizing his fellow-men like a bull-dog. He was a specimen of human nature degenerated, retrograded from the divine to the bestial, through the long-operating influences of false notions and institutions, continued beyond their time. He had only the soul of a keeper. Had he been only a keeper, he had been a much happier man.

His time was at hand. The severity which he had long dealt out towards all sorts of offenders made him the object of the deepest vengeance. In a lonely hollow of his woods, watching at midnight with two of his men, there came a sturdy knot of poachers. An affray ensued. The men perceived that their old enemy, Sir Roger, was there; and the blow of a hedge-stake stretched him on the earth. His keepers fled—and thus ignominiously terminated the long line of the Rockvilles. Sir Roger was the last of his line, but not of his class. There is a feudal art of sinking, which requires no study; and the Rockvilles are but one family among thousands who have perished in its practice.

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In Great Stockington there lived a race of paupers. From the year of the 42d of Elizabeth, or 1601, down to the present generation, this race maintained an uninterrupted descent. They were a steady and unbroken line of paupers, as the parish books testify. From generation to generation their demands on the parish funds stand recorded. There were no lacunæ in their career; there never failed an heir to these families; fed on the bread of idleness and legal provision, these people nourished, increased, and multiplied. Sometimes compelled to work for the weekly dole which they received, they never acquired a taste for labor, or lost the taste for the bread for which they did not labor. These paupers regarded this maintenance by no means as a disgrace. They claimed it as a right,—as their patrimony. They contended that one-third of the property of the Church had been given by benevolent individuals for the support of the poor, and that what the Reformation wrongfully deprived them of, the great enactment of Elizabeth rightfully—and only rightfully—restored.

Those who imagine that all paupers merely claimed parish relief because the law ordained it, commit a great error. There were numbers who were hereditary paupers, and that on a tradition carefully handed down, that they were only manfully claiming their own. They traced their claims from the most ancient feudal times, when the lord was as much bound to maintain his villein in gross, as the villein was to work for the lord. These paupers were, in fact, or claimed to be, the original adscripti glebæ, and to have as much a claim to parish support as the landed proprietor had to his land. For this reason, in the old Catholic times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away and remaining absent from their hundred for a year and a day, dwelling for that period in a walled town, these people were among the most diligent attendants at the Abbey doors, and when the Abbeys were dissolved, were, no doubt, among the most daring of these thieves, vagabonds, and sturdy rogues, who, after the Robin Hood fashion, beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their black mail in a very unceremonious style. It was out of this class that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign, and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their number.

That they continued to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,” overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the severe laws against them of whipping, burning in the hand, in the forehead or the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country with alarm, is evident by the very act itself of Elizabeth.

Among these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in Stockington, there was a family of the name of Deg. This family had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share of its ancient inheritance. It appeared from the parish records, that they had practised in different periods the crafts of shoe-making, tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the stocking frame, they had, one and all of them, followed the profession of stocking-weavers, or as they were there called, stockingers. This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical or intellectual powers. To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to and fro, was a thing that might either be carried to a degree of extreme diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness. An “idle stockinger” was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labor,—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that “hard work was enough to kill a man.” The Degs were seldom, therefore, out of work, but they did not get enough to meet and tie. They had but little work if times were bad, and if they were good, they had large families and sickly wives or children. Be times what they would, therefore, the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table. Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length not even to trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their young children for it; and it was duly paid. Did any parish officer, indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness, want of work, and poor earnings brought up, that he most likely got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate, and acquired a character for hard-heartedness that stuck to him.

So parish overseers learned to let the Degs alone; and their children regularly brought up to receive the parish money for their parents, were impatient as they grew up to receive it for themselves. Marriages in the Deg family were consequently very early, and there were plenty of instances of married Degs claiming parish relief under the age of twenty, on the plea of being the parent of two children. One such precocious individual being asked by a rather verdant officer why he had married before he was able to maintain a family, replied, in much astonishment, that he had married in order to maintain himself by parish assistance. That he never had been able to maintain himself by his labor, nor ever expected to do it; his only hope, therefore, lay in marrying and becoming the father of two children, to which patriarchal rank he had now attained, and demanded his “pay.”

Thus had lived and flourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony, the parish, for upwards of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage, they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an ale-house and of gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. It was become pure pauper blood. The Degs married, if not entirely among Degs, yet among the same class. None but a pauper would dream of marrying a Deg. The Degs, therefore, were in constitution, in mind, in habit, and in inclination, paupers. But a pure and unmixed class of this kind does not die out like an aristocratic stereotype. It increases and multiplies. The lower the grade, the more prolific, as is sometimes seen on a large and even national scale. The Degs threatened, therefore, to become a most formidable clan in the lower purlieus of Stockington, but luckily there is so much virtue even in evils, that one, not rarely cures another. War, the great evil, cleared the town of Degs.

Fond of idleness, of indulgence, of money easily got, and as easily spent, the Degs were rapidly drained off by recruiting parties during the last war. The young men enlisted, and were marched away; the young women married soldiers that were quartered in the town from time to time, and marched away with them. There were, eventually, none of the once numerous Degs left except a few old people, whom death was sure to draft off at no distant period with his regiment of the line which has no end. Parish overseers, magistrates, and master manufacturers, felicitated themselves at this unhoped-for deliverance from the ancient family of the Degs.

But one cold, clear winter evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare-shorn hedges, and poking his sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime of life, and in the great-coat and thick-worsted gloves of a wealthy traveller, cast a glance at the wretched creature trudging heavily on, expecting a pitiful appeal to his sensibilities, and thinking it a bore to have to pull off a glove and dive into his pocket for a copper; but to his surprise there was no demand, only a low curtsey, and the glimpse of a face of singular honesty of expression, and of excessive weariness.

Spires was a man of warm feelings; he looked earnestly at the woman, and thought he had never seen such a picture of fatigue in his life. He pulled up and said,

“You seem very tired, my good woman.”

“Awfully tired, sir.”

“And are you going far to-night?”

“To Great Stockington, sir, if God give me strength.”

“To Stockington!” exclaimed Mr. Spires. “Why you seem ready to drop. You’ll never reach it. You’d better stop at the next village.”

“Ay, sir, it’s easy stopping for those that have money.”

“And you’ve none, eh?”

“As God lives, sir, I’ve a sixpence, and that’s all.”

Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket, and held out to her the next instant half-a-crown.

“There stop, poor thing—make yourself comfortable—it’s quite out of the question to reach Stockington. But stay—are your friends living in Stockington—what are you?”

“A poor soldier’s widow, sir. And may God Almighty bless you!” said the poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large brown eyes as she curtsied very low.

“A soldier’s widow,” said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest place in the manufacturer’s heart, for he was a very loyal man, and vehement champion of his country’s honor in the war. “So young,” said he, “how did you lose your husband?”

“He fell, sir,” said the poor woman; but she could get no further; she suddenly caught up the corner of her gray cloak, covered her face with it, and burst into an excess of grief.

The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his careless question; he sat watching her for a moment in silence, and then said, “Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see you to Stockington.”

The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig, expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a cheerful tone to comfort her, “Bless me, but that is a fine thumping fellow, though. I don’t wonder you are tired, carrying such a load.”

The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to her breast, as if she felt it a great blessing and no load: the gig drove rapidly on.

Presently Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.

“So you are from Stockington?”

“No, sir; my husband was.”

“So: what was his name?”

“John Deg, sir.”

“Deg?” said Mr. Spires. “Deg, did you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off towards his own side of the gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman was somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent too.

After awhile Mr. Spires said again, “And do you hope to find friends in Stockington? Had you none where you came from?”

“None, sir, none in the world!” said the poor woman, and again her feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, “I was in service, sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother only was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died. When—when the news came from abroad—that—when I was a widow, sir, I went back to my native place, and the parish officers said I must go to my husband’s parish, lest I and my child should become troublesome.”

“You asked relief of them?”

“Never; oh, God knows, never! My family have never asked a penny of a parish. They would die first, and so would I, sir; but they said I might do it, and I had better go to my husband’s parish at once—and they offered me money to go.”

“And you took it, of course?”

“No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and laundering, and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them, and came off. I felt hurt, sir; my heart rose against the treatment of the parish, and I thought I should be better among my husband’s friends—and my child would, if anything happened to me; I had no friends of my own.”

Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence. “Did your husband tell you anything of his friends? What sort of a man was he?”

“Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, sir; but not bad to me. He always said his friends were well off in Stockington.”

“He did!” said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if bolting the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.

The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The manufacturer whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut with the whip, drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling down; it was numbing cold; a gray fog rose from the river as they thundered over the old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black smoky houses loomed through the dusk before them. They were at Stockington.

As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town, Mr. Spires again opened his mouth.

“I should be sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg,” he said, “but I have my fears that you are coming to this place with false expectations. I fear your husband did not give you the truest possible account of his family here.”

“Oh, Sir! What—what is it?” exclaimed the poor woman; “in God’s name, tell me!”

“Why, nothing more than this,” said the manufacturer, “that there are very few of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can do nothing for you.”

The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.

“But don’t be cast down,” said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her what a pauper family it really was, for he saw that she was a very feeling woman, and he thought she would learn that soon enough. He felt that her husband had from vanity given her a false account of his connections; and he was really sorry for her.

“Don’t be cast down,” he went on, “you can wash and iron, you say; you are young and strong; those are your friends. Depend on them, and they’ll be better friends to you than any other.”

The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on, through many long and narrow streets, with gas flaring from the shops, but with few people in the streets, and these hurrying shivering along the payment, so intense was the cold. Anon they stopped at a large pair of gates; the manufacturer rung a bell, which he could reach from his gig, and the gates presently were flung open, and they drove into a spacious yard, with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp burning before it, on one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.

“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said Mr. Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing the poor woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”

The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old man servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with her living load, stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and her cold ride.

We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spire’s linen, and the manner in which she executed her task insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in those meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass, attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of about the same age as Mrs. Deg’s child. The children, as time went on, became play-fellows. Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker’s birds, and by his flute, on which he often played after his work was done.

Mrs. Deg took a great friendship for this shoemaker; and he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents, but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of person, whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather her little boy had died than have been familiarized with the spirit and habits of those old people. Despise them she struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them on condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting story to recount all the troubles, annoyance, and querulous complaints, and even bitter accusations that she received from these connections, whom she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of her crosses in her life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them alone.

The shoemaker neighbor was a stout protection to her against the greedy demands of these old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely, suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman with a flourishing business, and a neat and soon well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for her boy, and she kept her resolve in firmness and gentleness.

The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town meadows to gather groundsell and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and while he sate on a stile and read in a little old book of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.

The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little Simon Deg was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He manifested the utmost uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the grass; he would burst with tears if they persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful, and that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat, a bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up in the air. He expected to see him in an ecstacy of delight; his own children clapped their hands in transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up another?” asked the shoemaker.

“No, no,” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up there, and he mayn’t like it.”

The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet, if we don’t take care.”

The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was especially indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases amongst the boys of the neighborhood.

He was now about twelve years of age; when, going one day with a basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’s for his mother, he was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window. The great war was raging; there was much distress amongst the manufacturers; and the people were suffering and exasperated against their masters. Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, was particularly obnoxious to the work-people, who uttered violent threats against him. For this reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the gates, was chained a huge and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and seemed not to notice them, but on the entrance of a stranger, he rose up, barked fiercely, and came to the length of his chain. This always drew the attention of the porter, if he were away from his box, and few persons dared to pass till he came.

Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head, when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first, reared himself with his back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say, “Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Spires, who sate near his counting-house window at his books, was struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a clerk, “What boy is that?”

“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.

“Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! What that’s the child that Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Stockington; and what a strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now!”

As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires call him to the counting-house door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and learning, and so on. Simon, taking off his cap with much respect, answered in such a clear and modest way, and with a voice that had so much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer was greatly taken with him.

“That’s no Deg,” said he, when he again entered the counting-house, “not a bit of it. He’s all Goodrick, or whatever his mother’s name was, every inch of him.”

The consequences of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon after perched on a stool in Mr. Spires’ counting-house, where he continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a single daughter; and such were Simon Deg’s talents, attention to business, and genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave him a share in the concern. He was himself now getting less fond of exertion than he had been, and placed the most implicit reliance on Simon’s judgment and general management. Yet no two men could be more unlike in their opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires was a staunch tory of the staunch old school. He was for Church and King, and for things remaining forever as they had been. Simon, on the other hand, had liberal and reforming notions. He was for the improvement of the people, and their admission to many privileges. Mr. Spires was, therefore, liked by the leading men of the place, and disliked by the people. Simon’s estimation was precisely in the opposite direction. But this did not disturb their friendship; it required another disturbing cause—and that came.

Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires, grew attached to each other; and, as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in the business, neither of the young people deemed that he would object to a partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made a tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted it, than Mr. Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of Ulysses.

“What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously opulent Spires?”

The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with an apoplexy. The ghosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he was black in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of leeches and lancet, that the life of the great man was saved. But there was an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it was done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for dignity he had, though the last of a long line of paupers—his own dignity, not his ancestors’—took silently, yet not unrespectfully, his share—a good, round sum, and entered another house of business.

For several years there appeared to be a feud and a bitterness between the former friends; yet it showed itself in no other manner than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood pre-eminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artisans. In his factory he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had set up a school for the children in the evenings, with a reading-room and conversation-room for the work-people, and encouraged them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures. Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of the manufacturers.

“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often to his wife and daughter, who only sighed and were silent.

Then came a furious election. The town, for a fortnight, more resembled the worst corner of Tartarus than a Christian borough. Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, all sorts of violence and abuse ruled and raged till the blood of all Stockington was at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen, ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond measure. But popular though, he still was, the other and old tory side triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party. Down went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace. There was a tremendous tempest of sticks, brick-bats, paving-stones, and rotten eggs. In the midst of this, Simon Deg, and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of a hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down, and trampled on by the crowd. In an instant, and, before his friends had missed him from among them, Simon Deg was then darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigor, and gesticulating, and no doubt shouting vehemently to the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger; but, another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighboring shop. It was Simon Deg, assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr. Spires.

Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he had received no serious injury.

“They had like to have done for me though,” said he.

“Yes, and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.

“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted manufacturer; “let me know? I owe him my life.”

“There he is!” said several gentlemen, at the same instant pushing forward Simon Deg.

“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. “Was it thee, my boy?” He did more, he stretched out his hand; the young man clasped it eagerly, and the two stood silent, and with a heartfelt emotion, which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union more sacred than esteem.

A week hence and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend in defence of conscientious principle, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.

Simon Deg was now the richest man in Stockington. His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise house-keeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.

Twenty-five years afterwards, when the worthy old Spires was dead, and Simon Deg had himself two sons attained to manhood; when he had five times been mayor of Stockington, and had been knighted on the presentation of a loyal address; still his mother was living to see it; and William Watson, the shoe-maker, was acting as the sort of orderly at Sir Simon’s chief manufactory. He occupied the Lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving on as it should do.

It was amazing how the most plebeian name of Simon Peg had slid, under the hands of the Heralds, into the really aristocratical one of Sir Simon Degge. They had traced him up a collateral kinship, spite of his own consciousness, to a baronet of the same name of the county of Stafford, and had given him a coat of arms that was really astonishing.

It was some years before this that Sir Roger Rockville breathed his last. His title and estate had fallen into litigation. Owing to two generations having passed without any issue of the Rockville family except the one son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so mingled with obscuring circumstances, and so equally balanced, that the lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep the property in Chancery, till they had not only consumed all the ready money and rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself. To save the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise. A neighboring squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure the title, on condition that the rest carried off the residuum of the estate. The woods and lands of Rockville were announced for sale!

It was at this juncture that old William Watson reminded Sir Simon Degge of a conversation in the great grove of Rockville, which they had held at the time that Sir Roger was endeavoring to drive the people thence. “What a divine pleasure might this man enjoy,” said Simon Deg to his humble friend, “if he had a heart capable of letting others enjoy themselves.”

“But we talk without the estate,” said William Watson, “what might we do if we were tried with it?”

Sir Simon was silent for a moment; then observed that there was sound philosophy in William Watson’s remark. He said no more, but went away; and the next day announced to the astonished old man that he had purchased the groves and the whole ancient estate of Rockville!

Sir Simon Degge, the last of a long line of paupers, was become the possessor of the noble estate of Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville, the last of a long line of aristocrats!

The following summer, when the hay was lying in fragrant cocks in the great meadows of Rockville, and on the little islands in the river, Sir Simon Degge, Baronet of Rockville,—for such was now his title—through the suggestion of a great lawyer, formerly recorder of the borough of Stockington to the crown—held a grand fête on the occasion of his coming to reside at Rockville Hall, henceforth the family seat of the Degges. His house and gardens had been restored to the most consummate order. For years Sir Simon had been a great purchaser of works of art and literature, paintings, statuary, books, and articles of antiquity, including rich armor and precious works in ivory and gold.

First and foremost he gave a great banquet to his wealthy friends, and no man with a million and a half is without them—and in abundance. In the second place, he gave a substantial dinner to all his tenantry, from the wealthy farmer of five hundred acres to the tenant of a cottage. On this occasion he said, “Game is a great subject of heart-burning, and of great injustice to the country. It was the bane of my predecessor; let us take care it is not ours. Let every man kill the game on the land that he rents—then he will not destroy it utterly, nor allow it to grow into a nuisance. I am fond of a gun myself, but I trust to find enough for my propensity to the chase in my own fields and woods—if I occasionally extend my pursuit across the lands of my tenants, it shall not be to carry off the first-fruits of their feeding, and I shall still hold the enjoyment as a favor.”

We need not say that this speech was applauded most vociferously. Thirdly, and lastly, he gave a grand entertainment to all his work-people, both of the town and the country. His house and gardens were thrown open to the inspection of the whole assembled company. The delighted crowd admired immensely the pictures and the pleasant gardens. On the lawn, lying between the great grove and the hall, an enormous tent was pitched, or rather a vast canvas canopy erected, open on all sides, in which was laid a charming banquet; a military band from Stockington barracks playing during the time. Here Sir Simon made a speech as rapturously received as that to the farmers. It was to the effect, that all the old privileges of wandering in the grove, and angling, and boating on the river, were restored. The inn was already rebuilt in a handsome Elizabethan style, larger than before, and to prevent it ever becoming a fane of intemperance, he had there posted as landlord, he hoped for many years to come, his old friend and benefactor, William Watson. William Watson should protect the inn from riot, and they themselves the groves and river banks from injury.

Long and loud were the applauses which this announcement occasioned. The young people turned out upon the green for a dance, and in the evening, after an excellent tea—the whole company descended the river to Stockington in boats and barges decorated with boughs and flowers, and singing a song made by William Watson for the occasion, called “The Health of Sir Simon, last and first of his Line.”

Years have rolled on. The groves and river banks and islands of Rockville are still greatly frequented, but are never known to be injured: poachers are never known there, for four reasons. First, nobody would like to annoy the good Sir Simon; secondly, game is not very numerous there; thirdly, there is no fun in killing it where there is no resistance; and fourthly, it is vastly more abundant in other proprietors’ demesnes, and it is fun to kill it there, where it is jealously watched, and there is a chance of a good spree with the keepers.

And with what different feelings does the good Sir Simon look down from his lofty eyrie, over the princely expanse of meadows, and over the glittering river, and over the stately woods to where Great Stockington still stretches farther and farther its red brick walls, its red-tiled roofs, and its tall smoke-vomiting chimneys. There he sees no haunts of crowded enemies to himself or any man. No upstarts, nor envious opponents, but a vast family of human beings, all toiling for the good of their families and their country. All advancing, some faster, some slower, to a better education, a better social condition, a better conception of the principles of art and commerce, and a clearer recognition of their rights and their duties, and a more cheering faith in the upward tendency of humanity.

Looking on this interesting scene from his distant and quiet home, Sir Simon sees what blessings flow—and how deeply he feels them in his own case—from a free circulation, not only of trade, but of human relations. How this corrects the mischiefs, moral and physical, of false systems and rusty prejudices;—and he ponders on schemes of no ordinary beauty and beneficence yet to reach his beloved town through them. He sees lecture halls and academies, means of sanitary purification, and delicious recreation, in which baths, wash-houses, and airy homes figure largely; while public walks extend all round the great industrial hive, including wood, hills, meadow, and river in their circuit of many miles. There he lived and labored; there live and labor his sons; and there he trusts his family will continue to live and labor to all future generations; never retiring to the fatal indolence of wealth, but aiding onwards its active and ever-expanding beneficence.

Long may the good Sir Simon live and labor to realize these views. But already in a green corner of the pleasant churchyard of Rockville may be read this inscription on a marble headstone:—“Sacred to the Memory of Jane Deg, the mother of Sir Simon Degge, Bart., of Rockville. This stone is erected in honor of the best of Mothers by the most grateful of sons.”

III.
The Gentleman Beggar

AN ATTORNEY’S STORY.

ONE morning, about five years ago, I called by appointment on Mr. John Balance, the fashionable pawnbroker, to accompany him to Liverpool, in pursuit for a Levanting customer,—for Balance, in addition to pawning, does a little business in the sixty per cent. line. It rained in torrents when the cab stopped at the passage which leads past the pawning boxes to his private door. The cabman rang twice, and at length Balance appeared, looming through the mist and rain in the entry, illuminated by his perpetual cigar. As I eyed him rather impatiently, remembering that trains wait for no man, something like a hairy dog, or a bundle of rags, rose up at his feet, and barred his passage for a moment. Then Balance cried out with an exclamation, in answer apparently to a something I could not hear, “What, man alive!—slept in the passage!—there, take that, and get some breakfast for Heaven’s sake!” So saying, he jumped into the “Hansom,” and we bowled away at ten miles an hour, just catching the Express as the doors of the station were closing. My curiosity was full set,—for although Balance can be free with his money, it is not exactly to beggars that his generosity is usually displayed; so when comfortably ensconced in a coupé, I finished with—

“You are liberal with your money this morning; pray, how often do you give silver to street cadgers?—because I shall know now what walk to take when flats and sharps leave off buying law.”

Balance, who would have made an excellent parson if he had not been bred to a case-hardening trade, and has still a soft bit left in his heart that is always fighting with his hard head, did not smile at all, but looked as grim as if squeezing a lemon into his Saturday night’s punch. He answered slowly, “A cadger—yes; a beggar—a miserable wretch, he is now; but let me tell you, Master David, that that miserable bundle of rags was born and bred a gentleman; the son of a nobleman, the husband of an heiress, and has sat and dined at tables where you and I, Master David, are only allowed to view the plate by favor of the butler. I have lent him thousands, and been well paid. The last thing I had from him was his court suit; and I hold now his bill for one hundred pounds that will be paid, I expect, when he dies.”

“Why, what nonsense you are talking! you must be dreaming this morning. However, we are alone, I’ll light a weed, in defiance of Railway law, you shall spin that yarn; for, true or untrue, it will fill up the time to Liverpool.”

“As for yarn,” replied Balance, “the whole story is short enough; and as for truth, that you may easily find out if you like to take the trouble. I thought the poor wretch was dead, and I own it put me out meeting him this morning, for I had a curious dream last night.”

“Oh, hang your dreams! Tell us about this gentleman beggar that bleeds you of half-crowns—that melts the heart even of a pawnbroker!”

“Well, then, that beggar is the illegitimate son of the late Marquis of Hoopborough by a Spanish lady of rank. He received a first-rate education, and was brought up in his father’s house. At a very early age he obtained an appointment in a public office, was presented by the marquis at court, and received into the first society, where his handsome person and agreeable manners made him a great favorite. Soon after coming of age, he married the daughter of Sir E. Bumper, who brought him a very handsome fortune, which was strictly settled on herself. They lived in splendid style, kept several carriages, a house in town, and a place in the country. For some reason or other, idleness, or to plead his lady’s pride he said, he resigned his appointment. His father died, and left him nothing; indeed, he seemed at that time very handsomely provided for.

“Very soon Mr. and Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy began to disagree. She was cold, correct—he was hot and random. He was quite dependent on her, and she made him feel it. When he began to get into debt, he came to me. At length some shocking quarrel occurred; some case of jealousy on the wife’s side, not without reason, I believe; and the end of it was Mr. Fitz-Roy was turned out of doors. The house was his wife’s, the furniture was his wife’s, and the fortune was his wife’s—he was, in fact, her pensioner. He left with a few hundred pounds ready money, and some personal jewellery, and went to a hotel. On these and credit he lived. Being illegitimate, he had no relations; being a fool, when he spent his money he lost his friends. The world took his wife’s part, when they found she had the fortune, and the only parties who interfered were her relatives, who did their best to make the quarrel incurable. To crown all, one night he was run over by a cab, was carried to a hospital, and lay there for months, and was during several weeks of the time unconscious. A message to the wife, by the hands of one of his debauched companions, sent by a humane surgeon, obtained an intimation that ‘if he died, Mr. Croak, the undertaker to the family, had orders to see to the funeral,’ and that Mrs. Molinos was on the point of starting for the Continent, not to return for some years. When Fitz-Roy was discharged, he came to me limping on two sticks, to pawn his court suit, and told me his story. I was really sorry for the fellow, such a handsome, thoroughbred-looking man. He was going then into the west somewhere, to try to hunt out a friend. ‘What to do, Balance,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t dig, and unless somebody will make me their gamekeeper, I must starve or beg, as my Jezebel bade me when we parted!’

“I lost sight of Molinos for a long time, and when I next came upon him it was in the Rookery of Westminster, in a low lodging-house, where I was searching with an officer for stolen goods. He was pointed out to me as the ‘gentleman cadger,’ because he was so free with his money when ‘in luck.’ He recognized me, but turned away then. I have since seen him, and relieved him more than once, although he never asks for anything. How he lives, Heaven knows. Without money, without friends, without useful education of any kind, he tramps the country, as you saw him, perhaps doing a little hop-picking or hay-making, in season, only happy when he obtains the means to get drunk. I have heard through the kitchen whispers that you know come to me, that he is entitled to some property; and I expect if he were to die his wife would pay the hundred pound bill I hold; at any rate, what I have told you I know to be true, and the bundle of rags I relieved just now is known in every thieves’ lodging in England as the ‘gentleman cadger.’ ”

This story produced an impression on me,—I am fond of speculation, and like the excitement of a legal hunt as much as some do a fox-chase. A gentleman a beggar, a wife rolling in wealth, rumors of unknown property due to the husband; it seemed as if there were pickings for me amidst this carrion of pauperism.

Before returning from Liverpool, I had purchased the gentleman beggar’s acceptance from Balance. I then inserted in the “Times” the following advertisement: “Horatio Molinos Fitz-Roy.—If this gentleman will apply to David Discount, Esq., Solicitor, St. James’s, he will hear of something to his advantage. Any person furnishing Mr. F.’s correct address, shall receive 1l. 1s. reward. He was last seen,” &c. Within twenty-four hours I had ample proof of the wide circulation of the “Times.” My office was besieged with beggars of every degree, men and women, lame and blind, Irish, Scotch, and English, some on crutches, some in bowls, some in go-carts. They all knew him as “the gentleman,” and I must do the regular fraternity of tramps the justice to say that not one would answer a question until he made certain that I meant the “gentleman” no harm.

One evening, about three weeks after the appearance of the advertisement, my clerk announced “another beggar.” There came in an old man leaning upon a staff, clad in a soldier’s great coat all patched and torn, with a battered hat, from under which a mass of tangled hair fell over his shoulders and half concealed his face. The beggar, in a weak, wheezy, hesitating tone, said, “You have advertised for Molinos Fitz-Roy. I hope you don’t mean him any harm; he is sunk, I think, too low for enmity now; and surely no one would sport with such misery as his.” These last words were uttered in a sort of piteous whisper.

I answered quickly, “Heaven forbid I should sport with misery; I mean and hope to do him good, as well as myself.”

“Then, Sir, I am Molinos Fitz-Roy!”

While we were conversing candles had been brought in. I have not very tender nerves—my head would not agree with them—but I own I started and shuddered when I saw and knew that the wretched creature before me was under thirty years of age and once a gentleman. Sharp, aquiline features, reduced to literal skin and bone, were begrimed and covered with dry fair hair; the white teeth of the half-open mouth chattered with eagerness, and made more hideous the foul pallor of the rest of the countenance. As he stood leaning on a staff half bent, his long, yellow bony fingers clasped over the crutch-head of his stick, he was indeed a picture of misery, famine, squalor, and premature age, too horrible to dwell upon. I made him sit down, sent for some refreshment, which he devoured like a ghoul, and set to work to unravel his story. It was difficult to keep him to the point; but with pains I learned what convinced me that he was entitled to some property, whether great or small there was no evidence. On parting, I said “Now Mr. F., you must stay in town while I make proper inquiries. What allowance will be enough to keep you comfortably?”

He answered humbly after much pressing, “Would you think ten shillings too much!”

I don’t like, if I do those things at all, to do them shabbily, so I said, “Come every Saturday and you shall have a pound.” He was profuse in thanks of course, as all such men are as long as distress lasts.

I had previously learned that my ragged client’s wife was in England, living in a splendid house in Hyde Park Gardens, under her maiden name. On the following day the Earl of Owing called upon me, wanting five thousand pounds by five o’clock the same evening. It was a case of life or death with him, so I made my terms and took advantage of his pressure to execute a coup de main. I proposed that he should drive me home to receive the money, calling at Mrs. Molinos in Hyde Park Gardens, on our way. I knew that the coronet and liveries of his father, the Marquis, would ensure me an audience with Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy.

My scheme answered. I was introduced into the lady’s presence. She was, and probably is, a very stately, handsome woman, with a pale complexion, high solid forehead, regular features, thin, pinched, self-satisfied mouth. My interview was very short. I plunged into the middle of the affair, but had scarcely mentioned the word husband, when she interrupted me with “I presume you have lent this profligate person money, and want me to pay you.” She paused, and then said, “He shall not have a farthing.” As she spoke, her white face became scarlet.

“But, Madam, the man is starving. I have strong reasons for believing he is entitled to property, and if you refuse any assistance, I must take other measures.” She rang the bell, wrote something rapidly on a card; and, as the footman appeared, pushed it towards me across the table, with the air of touching a toad, saying, “There, Sir, is the address of my solicitors; apply to them if you think you have any claim. Robert, show the person out, and take care he is not admitted again.”

So far I had effected nothing; and, to tell the truth, felt rather crest-fallen under the influence of that grand manner peculiar to certain great ladies and to all great actresses.

My next visit was to the attorneys Messrs’. Leasem and Fashun, of Lincoln’s Inn Square, and there I was at home. I had had dealings with the firm before. They are agents for half the aristocracy, who always run in crowds like sheep after the same wine-merchants, the same architects, the same horse-dealers, and the same law-agents. It may be doubted whether the quality of law and land management they get on this principle is quite equal to their wine and horses. At any rate, my friends of Lincoln’s Inn, like others of the same class, are distinguished by their courteous manners, deliberate proceedings, innocence of legal technicalities, long credit and heavy charges. Leasem, the elder partner, wears powder and a huge bunch of seals, lives in Queen Square, drives a brougham, gives the dinners and does the cordial department. He is so strict in performing the latter duty, that he once addressed a poacher who had shot a Duke’s keeper, as “my dear creature,” although he afterwards hung him.

Fashun has chambers in St. James Street, drives a cab, wears a tip, and does the grand haha style.

My business lay with Leasem. The interviews and letters passing were numerous. However, it came at last to the following dialogue:—

“Well, my dear Mr. Discount,” began Mr. Leasem, who hates me like poison. “I’m really very sorry for that poor dear Molinos—knew his father well; a great man, a perfect gentleman; but you know what women are, eh, Mr. Discount? My client won’t advance a shilling, she knows it would only be wasted in low dissipation. Now don’t you think (this was said very insinuatingly)—don’t you think he had better be sent to the work-house; very comfortable accommodation there, I can assure you—meat twice a week, and excellent soup; and then, Mr. D., we might consider about allowing you something for that bill.”

“Mr. Leasem, can you reconcile it to your conscience to make such an arrangement. Here’s a wife rolling in luxury, and a husband starving!”

“No, Mr. Discount, not starving; there is the work-house, as I observed before; besides, allow me to suggest that these appeals to feeling are quite unprofessional—quite unprofessional.”

“But, Mr. Leasem, touching this property which the poor man is entitled to.”

“Why, there again, Mr. D., you must excuse me; you really must. I don’t say he is, I don’t say he is not. If you know he is entitled to property, I am sure you know how to proceed; the law is open to you, Mr. Discount—the law is open; and a man of your talent will know how to use it.”

“Then, Mr. Leasem, you mean that I must in order to right this starving man, file a Bill of Discovery to extract from you the particulars of his rights. You have the Marriage Settlement, and all the information, and you decline to allow a pension, or afford any information; the man is to starve, or go to the work-house?”

“Why, Mr. D., you are so quick and violent, it really is not professional; but you see (here a subdued smile of triumph), it has been decided that a solicitor is not bound to afford such information as you ask, to the injury of his client.”

“Then you mean that this poor Molinos may rot and starve, while you keep secret from him, at his wife’s request, his title to an income, and that the Court of Chancery will back you in this iniquity?”

I kept repeating the word “starve,” because I saw it made my respectable opponent wince. “Well, then, just listen to me. I know that in the happy state of our equity law, Chancery can’t help my client; but I have another plan; I shall go hence to my office, issue a writ, and take your client’s husband in execution—as soon as he is lodged in jail, I shall file his schedule in the Insolvent Court, and when he comes up for his discharge, I shall put you in the witness-box, and examine you on oath, ‘touching any property of which you know the insolvent to be possessed,’ and where will be your privileged communications then?”

The respectable Leasem’s face lengthened in a twinkling, his comfortable confident air vanished, he ceased twiddling his gold chain, and at length he muttered, “Suppose we pay the debt?”

“Why, then, I’ll arrest him the day after for another.”

“But, my dear Mr. Discount, surely such, conduct would not be quite respectable?”

“That’s my business; my client has been wronged, I am determined to right him, and when the aristocratic firm of Leasem and Fashun takes refuge, according to the custom of respectable repudiators, in the cool arbors of the Court of Chancery, why, a mere bill-discounting attorney, like David Discount, need not hesitate about cutting a bludgeon out of the Insolvent Court.”

“Well, well, Mr. D., you are so warm—so fiery; we must deliberate, we must consult. You will give me until the day after to-morrow, and then we’ll write you our final determination; in the, meantime send us copy of your authority to act for Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy.”

Of course I lost no time in getting the gentleman beggar to sign a proper letter.

On the appointed day came a communication with the L. and F. seal, which I opened not without unprofessional eagerness. It was as follows:

“In re Molinos Fitz-Roy and Another.

“Sir,—In answer to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we beg to inform you that under the administration of a paternal aunt who died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents; one thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock, besides other securities, making up about ten thousand pounds, which we are prepared to transfer over to Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy’s direction forthwith.”

Here was a windfall! It quite took away my breath.

At dusk came my gentleman beggar, and what puzzled me was how to break the news to him. Being very much overwhelmed with business that day, I had not much time for consideration. He came in rather better dressed than when I first saw him, with only a week’s beard on his chin; but, as usual, not quite sober. Six weeks had elapsed since our first interview. He was still the humble, trembling, low-voiced creature, I first knew him.

After a prelude, I said, “I find, Mr. F., you are entitled to something; pray, what do you mean to give me in addition to my bill for obtaining it?” He answered rapidly, “Oh, take half; if there is one hundred pounds, take half; if there is five hundred pounds, take half.”

“No, no, Mr. F., I don’t do business in that way, I shall be satisfied with ten per cent.”

It was so settled. I then led him out into the street, impelled to tell the news, yet dreading the effect; not daring to make the revelation in my office for fear of a scene.

I began hesitatingly, “Mr. Fitz-Roy, I am happy to say that I find you are entitled to.... ten thousand pounds!”

“Ten thousand pounds!” he echoed. “Ten thousand pounds!” he shrieked. “Ten thousand pounds!” he yelled, seizing my arm violently.

“You are a brick,—— Here, cab! cab!” Several drove up—the shout might have been heard a mile off. He jumped in the first.

“Where to?” said the driver.

“To a tailor’s, you rascal!”

“Ten thousand pounds! ha, ha, ha!” he repeated hysterically, when in the cab; and every moment grasping my arm. Presently he subsided, looked me straight in the face, and muttered with agonizing fervor, “What a jolly brick you are!”

The tailor, the hosier, the bootmaker, the hairdresser, were in turn visited by this poor pagan of externals. As by degrees under their hands he emerged from the beggar to the gentleman, his spirits rose; his eyes brightened; he walked erect, but always nervously grasping my arm; fearing, apparently, to lose sight of me for a moment, lest his fortune should vanish with me. The impatient pride with which he gave his order to the astonished tradesman for the finest and best of everything, and the amazed air of the fashionable hairdresser when he presented his matted locks and stubble chin to be “cut and shaved,” may be acted—it cannot be described.

By the time the external transformation was complete, and I sat down in a café in the Haymarket opposite a haggard but handsome thoroughbred-looking man, whose air, with the exception of the wild eyes and deeply-browned face, did not differ from the stereotyped men about town sitting around us, Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy had already almost forgotten the past; he bullied the waiter, and criticized the wine, as if he had done nothing else but dine and drink and scold there all the days of his life.

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole story to the coffee-room assembly in a raving style. When I left he almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing for these ebullitions—the natural result of such a whirl of events—he was wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his friends the cadgers, at a house of call in Westminster, and formally to dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the “fraternity,” that for the future he should never be noticed by them in public or private.

I cannot follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough. The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a grand dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable, good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a display of pretty butterfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as men do of iced wines in the dog-days—looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he looked—less the intellect—as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited and flushed, he rose with a champagne glass in his hand to propose my health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out sentences by spasms, at length he said, “I was a beggar—I am a gentleman—thanks to this——”

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We raised him, loosened his neckcloth—

“Fainted!” said the ladies—

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen—

He was dead!

IV.
“Evil is Wrought by Want of Thought.”

“IT must come some day; and come when it will, it will be hard to do, so we had best go at once, Sally. I shall have more trouble with Miss Isabel than you will with Miss Laura; for I am twice the favorite you are.”

So said Fanny to her cousin, who had just turned to descend the staircase of Aldington Hall, where they had both lived since they were almost children, in attendance on the two daughters of the old baronet, who were near their own ages, and had always treated them with great kindness.

“I am not sure of that,” replied Sally, “for Miss Laura is so seldom put out, that when once she is vexed, she will be hard to comfort; and I am sure, Fanny, she loves me every bit as well as Miss Isabel does you, though it is her way to be so quiet. I dare say she will cry when I say I must go; but then John would be like to cry too, if I put him off longer.”

This consideration restored Sally’s courage, and she proceeded with Fanny to the gallery into which the rooms of their young mistresses opened; but here Fanny’s heart failed her; and, stopping short, she said,

“Suppose we tell them to wait awhile longer, as the young ladies are going to travel. We might as well see the world first, and marry in a year or two. But still,” added she, after a pause, “I could not find it in my heart to say so to Thomas; and I promised him to speak to-day.”

Each cousin then knocked at the door of her mistress. Laura was not in her room, and Sally went to seek her below stairs; but Isabel called to Fanny to go in.

Fanny obeyed, and walking forward a few steps, faltered out, with many blushes, that as young Thomas had kept company with her for nearly a twelvemonth, and had taken and furnished a little cottage, and begged hard to take her home to it; she was sorry to say, that if Miss Isabel would give her leave, she wished to give warning and to go from her service in a month.

Fanny’s most sanguine wishes or fears, must have been surpassed by the burst of surprise and grief that followed her modest statement. Isabel reproached her; refused to take her warning; declared she would never see her again if she left the Hall, and that rather than be served by any but her dear Fanny, she would wait upon herself all her life. Fanny expostulated, and told her mistress that, foreseeing her unwillingness to lose her, she had already put Thomas off several months; and that at last, to gain further delay, she had run the risk of appearing selfish, by refusing to marry him till he had furnished a whole cottage for her. This, she said he had—by working late and early—accomplished in a surprisingly short time, and had the day before claimed the reward of his industry. “And now, Miss,” added she, “he gets quite pale, and begins to believe I do not love him, and yet I do, better than all the world, and could not find it in my heart to vex him, and make him look sad again. Yesterday he seemed so happy, when I promised to be his wife in a month.” Here Fanny burst into tears. Her sobs softened Isabel, who consented to let her go; and after talking over her plans, became as enthusiastic in promoting, as she had at first been, in opposing them. Thomas was to take Fanny over to see the cottage, that evening, and Isabel, in the warmth of her heart, promised to accompany them. Fanny thanked her with a curtesy, and thought how pleased she ought to be at such condescension in her young mistress, but could not help fearing that her sweetheart would not half appreciate the favor.

After receiving many promises of friendship and assistance, Fanny hastened to report to Sally the success of her negotiation. Sally was sitting in their little bedroom, thoughtful, and almost sad. She listened to Fanny’s account; and replied in answer to her questions concerning Miss Laura’s way of taking her warning, “I am afraid, Fanny, you were right in thinking yourself the greatest favorite, for Miss Laura seemed almost pleased at my news; she took me by the hand, and said, ‘I am very glad to hear you are to marry such a good young man as every one acknowledges John Maythorn to be, and you may depend upon my being always ready to help you, if you want assistance.’ She then said a deal about my having lived with her six years, and not having once displeased her, and told me that master had promised my mother and yours too, that his young ladies should see after us all our lives. This was very kind, to be sure; but then Miss Isabel promised you presents whether you wanted assistance or not, and is to give you a silk gown and a white ribbon for the wedding, and is to go over to the cottage with you; now Miss Laura did not say a word of any such thing.”

Fanny tried to comfort her cousin by saying it was Miss Laura’s quiet way; but she could not help secretly rejoicing that her own mistress was so generous and affectionate.

In the evening the two sweethearts came to lead their future wives to the cottages, which were near each other, and at about a mile from the Hall. John had a happy walk. He learned from Sally that he was to “take her home” in a month, and was so pleased at the news, that he could scarcely be happier when she bustled about, exclaiming at every new sight in the pretty bright little cottage. The tea-caddy, the cupboard of china, and a large cat, each called forth a fresh burst of joy. Sally thought everything “the prettiest she had ever seen;” and when John made her sit in the arm-chair and put her feet on the fender, as if she were already mistress of the cottage, she burst into sobs of joy. We will not pause to tell how her sobs were stopped, nor what promises of unchanging kindness, were made in that bright little kitchen; but we may safely affirm that Sally and John were happier than they had ever been in their lives, and that old Mrs. Maythorn, who was keeping the cottage for Sally, felt all her fondest wishes were fulfilled as she saw the two lovers depart.

Fanny and Thomas, who had left them at the cottage door, walked on to their own future home, quite overwhelmed by the honor Miss Isabel was conferring on them by walking at their side.

“You see, Miss,” said Thomas, as he turned the key of his cottage-door, “there is nothing to speak of here, only such things as are necessary, and all of the plainest; but it will do well enough for us poor folks;” and as he threw open the door, he found to his surprise that what had seemed to him yesterday so pretty and neat, now looked indeed “all of the plainest.” The very carpet, and metal teapot, which he had intended as surprises for Fanny, he was now ashamed of pointing out to her, and he apologized to Isabel for the coarse quality of the former, telling her it was only to serve till he could get a better.

“Yes,” answered she, “this is not half good enough for my little Fanny, she must have a real Brussels carpet. I will send her one. I will make your cottage so pretty, Fanny, you shall have a nice china tea set, not these common little things, and I will give you some curtains for the window.” Thomas blushed as this deficiency was pointed out. “Why, Miss,” said he, “I meant to have trained the rose tree over the window, I thought that would be shady, and sweet in the summer, and in the winter, why, we should want all the day-light; but then to be sure, curtains will be much better.”

“Yes, Thomas,” replied the young lady, “and warm in the winter; you could not be comfortable with a few bare rose stalks before your window, when the snow was on the ground.” This had not occurred to Thomas, who now said faintly, “Oh, no, Miss,” and felt that curtains were indispensable to comfort.

Similar deficiencies or short-comings were discovered everywhere, so that even Fanny, who would at first be pleased with all she saw, in spite of the numerous defects that seemed to exist everywhere, gradually grew silent and ashamed of her cottage. She did her utmost to conceal from Thomas how entirely she agreed with her mistress, and as this generous young lady finished every remark, by saying “I will get you one,” or “I will send you another,” she felt that all would be right before long.

As Thomas closed the door, he wondered how in his wish to please Fanny he could have deceived himself so completely as to the merits of his cottage and furniture; but he too comforted himself by remembering how his kind patroness was to remedy all the defects; “though,” thought he, “I should have liked better to have done it all well myself.”

The lady and the two lovers walked homewards, almost without speaking, till they overtook John and Sally, who were whispering and laughing, talking of their cottage, Mrs. Maythorn’s joy at seeing them happy, their future plans for themselves and her, and all in so confused a way, that though twenty new subjects were started and discussed, none came to and conclusion, but that John and Sally loved each other and were very, very happy.

“What ails you, Thomas?” said John. “Has any one robbed your house? I told you it was not safe to leave it,” but seeing Miss Isabel, he touched his hat and fell back to where Fanny was talking to her cousin. Isabel, however, left them that she might take a short cut through the park, while they went round by the road.

At the end of the walk, Sally was half inclined to be dissatisfied with her furniture, so much had Fanny boasted of the improvements that were to be made in her own, but she could not get rid of the first impression it had made on her, and in a few days she quite forgot the want of curtains and carpet, and could only remember the happy time when she sat in the arm-chair with her foot on the fender.

As the month drew to a close, the two sisters made presents to their maids. Laura gave Sally a merino dress, a large piece of linen, a cellar full of coals, and a five pound note. Isabel gave Fanny a silk gown that cost three guineas, a beautiful white bonnet ribbon, a small chimney glass (for which she kindly went into debt), three left-off muslin dresses, a painting done by her own hand, in a handsome gilt frame, and a beautiful knitted purse. Besides all this, she told Fanny it was still her intention to get the other things she had promised for the cottage, as soon as she had paid for the chimney glass. “I am very sorry,” she said, “that just now I am so poor, for unfortunately, as you know, I have had to pay for those large music volumes I ordered when I was in London, and which after all I never used. It always happens that I am poor when I want to make presents.”

Fanny stopped her mistress with abundant thanks for the beautiful things she had already given her. “I am sure, Miss,” said she, “I shall scarcely dare wear these dresses, they look so lady-like and fine; Sally will seem quite strange by me. And this purse too, Miss; I never saw anything so smart.”

Isabel was quite satisfied that she had eclipsed her sister in the number and value of her gifts, but she still assured Fanny she had but made a beginning. Large and generous indeed, were this young lady’s intentions.

On the wedding morning Isabel rose early and dressed herself without assistance, then crossing to the room of the two cousins, she entered without knocking. Sally was gone, and Fanny lay sleeping alone.

“How pretty she is!” said Isabel to herself. “She ought to be dressed like a lady to-day. I will see to it;” then glancing proudly at the silk gown, which was laid out with all the other articles of dress, ready for the coming ceremony, her heart swelled with consciousness of her own generosity. “I have done nothing yet,” continued she; “she has been with me nearly six years, and always pleased me entirely, then papa promised her mother that he should befriend her as long as we both lived, and he has charged us both to do our utmost for our brides. Laura has bought Sally a shawl, I ought to give one too—what is this common thing? Fanny! Fanny! wake up. I am come to be your maid to-day, for you shall be mistress on your wedding morning and have a lady to dress you. What is this shawl? It will not do with a silk dress, wait a minute,” and off she darted, leaving Fanny sitting up and rubbing her eyes trying to remember what her young mistress had said. Before she was quite conscious, Isabel returned with a Norfolk shawl of fine texture and design, but somewhat soiled. “There,” said she, throwing it across the silk gown, “those go much better together. I will give it you, Fanny.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Fanny, in a tone of hesitation; “but—but suppose, Miss, I was to wear Thomas’ shawl just to-day, as he gave it me for the wedding, and John got Sally one like it—I think, Miss—don’t you think, Miss, it might seem unkind to wear any other just to-day?”

“Why, it is just to-day I want to make you look like a lady, Fanny; no, no, you must not put on that white cotton-looking shawl with a silk dress, and this ribbon,” said Isabel, taking up the bonnet, proudly. Fanny looked sad, but the young mistress did not see this, for she was examining the white silk gloves that lay beside the bonnet. “These,” thought she, “are not quite right, they look servantish, but my kid gloves would not fit her, besides, I have none clean, and it is well, perhaps, that she should have a few things to mark her rank. Yes, they will do.”

There was so much confusion between the lady’s offering help, and the maid’s modestly refusing it, that the toilette was long in completing. At last, however, Isabel was in ecstasies. “Look,” said she, “how the bonnet becomes you! and the Norfolk shawl, too, no one would think you were only a lady’s-maid, Fanny. Stop, I will get a ribbon for your throat.” Off she flew, and was back again in five minutes. “But what is that for, Fanny? Are you afraid it will rain this bright morning?”

Fanny had, in Isabel’s absence, folded Thomas’ shawl, and hung it across her arm. “I thought, Miss,” answered she, blushing, “that I might just carry it to show Thomas that I did not forget his present, or think it too homely to go to church with me.”

“Impossible,” said Isabel, who, to do her justice, we must state, was far too much excited to suspect that she was making Fanny uncomfortable; “you will spoil all. There, put the shawl away,—that’s right, you look perfect. Go down to your bridegroom, I hear his voice in the hall, I will not come too, though I should like above all things to see his surprise, but I should spoil your meeting, and I am the last person in the world to do anything so selfish. One thing more, Fanny: I shall give you two guineas, that you may spend three or four days at L——, by the sea-side; no one goes home directly, you would find it very dull to settle down at once in your cottage; tell Thomas so.” Isabel then retired to her room, wishing heartily that she could part with half her prettiest things, that she might heap more favors on the interesting little bride.

Laura’s first thought that morning had also been of the little orphan, who had served her so long and faithfully, and whom her father had commended to her special care. She, too, had risen early, but without dressing herself, she went across to Sally. Sally was asleep, with the traces of tears on her cheeks; Laura looked at her for a few moments, and remembered how, when both were too young to understand the distinction of rank, they had been almost play-mates; she wiped from her own eyes a little moisture that dimmed them, then putting her hand gently on Sally’s shoulder, she said, “Wake, Sally, I call you early that you may have plenty of time to dress me first and yourself afterwards. I know you would not like to miss waiting on me, or to do it hurriedly for the last time. You have been crying, Sally, do not color about it, I should think ill of you if you were not sorry to leave us, you cannot feel the parting more than I do. I dare say I shall have hard work to keep dry eyes all day, but we must do our best, Sally, for it will not for John to think I grudge you to him, or that you like me better than you do him.”

“Oh, no, Miss!” replied Sally, who felt at that moment that she could scarcely love any one better than her kind mistress. “Still John will not be hard upon me for a few tears,” added she, putting the sheet to her eyes.

“Come, come, Sally, this will not do, jump up and dress yourself quickly, that you may be ready to brush my hair when I return from the dressing-room; you must do it well to day, for you know I am not yet suited with a maid, and do it myself to-morrow.”

This roused Sally, who dressed in great haste and was soon at her post. Laura asked her many questions about her plans for the future, and found with pleasure that most things had been well considered and arranged. “There is only one thing, Miss,” said Sally, in conclusion, “that we are sorry for, and it is that we cannot offer old Mrs. Maythorn a home. She has no child but John, and will sadly feel his leaving her.”

“But why cannot she live with you and work as she does now, so as to pay you for what she costs?”

“Why, Miss, where she is she works about the house for her board, and does a trifle outdoors besides, that gets her clothing. John says it makes him feel quite cowardly, as it were, to see his old mother working at scrubbing and scouring, making her poor back ache, when he is so young and strong; yet we scarcely know if we could undertake for her altogether. I wish we could.”

“How much would it cost you?”

“A matter of four shillings a week; besides, we must get a bed and bedding. That we could put up in the kitchen, if we bought it to shut up in the day-time, and, as John says, Mrs. Maythorn would help us nicely when we get some little ones. But it would cost a deal of money to begin and go on with.”

“I will think of this for you, Sally. It would be easy for me to give you four shillings a week now, but I may not always be able to do it. I may marry a poor man, or one who will not allow me to spend my money as I please, and were Mrs. Maythorn to give up her present employments, she would not be able to get them back again three or four years hence, nor would she, at her age, be able to meet with others; and if you would find it difficult to keep her now, you would much more when you have a little family; so we must do nothing hastily. I will consult papa; he will tell me directly whether I shall be right in promising you the four shillings a week. If I do promise it, you may depend on always having it.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss, for the thought: I will tell John directly I see him; the very hope will fill him with joy.”

“No,” said Laura, “do not tell him yet, Sally, for you would be sorry to disappoint him afterwards, if I could not undertake it. Wait a day or two, and I will give you an answer; or, if possible, it shall be sooner. Now, thank you for the nice brushing: I will put up my hair while you go and dress; it is getting late. If you require assistance, and Fanny is not in your room, tap at my door, for I shall be pleased to help you to-day.”

Laura was not called in; but when she thought the toilette must be nearly completed, went to Sally with the shawl which she had bought for her the day before. As she entered, Sally was folding the white one John had given her. “I have brought you a shawl,” said Laura, “which I want you to wear to-day; it is much handsomer than that you are folding. See, do you like it?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Sally, “it is a very good one, I see,” and she began to re-fold the other; but Laura noticed the expression of disappointment with which she made the change, and taking up the plain shawl, said, “I do not know whether this does not suit your neat muslin dress better than mine. Did you buy it yourself, Sally?”

“No, Miss, it was John’s present; but I will put on yours this morning, if you please, Miss, and I can wear John’s any day.”

“No, no,” replied Laura, “you must put on John’s to-day. It matters but little to me when you wear mine, so long as it does you good service; but John will feel hurt if you cast his present aside on your wedding-day, because some one else has given you a shawl worth a few shillings more.” So Laura put the white shawl on the shoulders of Sally, who valued it more than the finest Cashmere in the world.

As Sally went down stairs, she saw Fanny in tears on the landing. “I cannot think how it is,” answered she, in reply to Sally’s questioning, “but just on this day, when I thought to feel so happy, I am quite low. Miss Isabel has been so kind, she has dressed me, and quite flustered me with her attentions. See what nice things she has given me—this shawl—though for that matter, I’d rather have worn Thomas’s. Oh, how nice you look. Dear, so neat and becoming your station, and with John’s shawl, too, but then Miss Laura has made you no present.”

“Yes, a good shawl and a promise besides, but I well tell you about that another time. Let us go in now, they must be waiting for us.”

Fanny felt so awkward in her fine clothes, that she could scarcely be prevailed on to encounter the gaze of the servants; but her good-natured cousin promising to explain that all her dress was given and chosen by her mistress, she at last went into the hall. Sally’s explanation was only heard by a few of the party, and as Fanny, in trying to conceal herself from the gaze of the astonished villagers, slunk behind old Mrs. Maythorn, she had the mortification of hearing her say to John, in the loud whisper peculiar to deaf people, “I am so glad, John, the neat one is yours; I should be quite frightened to see you take such a fine lady as Fanny to the altar; it makes me sorry for Thomas to see her begin so smart.”

When the ceremony was over, the party returned to the Hall, where a hospitable meal had been provided for all the villagers of good character who chose to partake of it. It was a merry party, for even Fanny, when every one had seen her finery long enough to forget it, forgot it herself. Thomas was very good-natured about the shawl, and delighted at the prospect of spending a few days at L——. He and Fanny talked of the boat-excursions they would have, the shells they would gather for a grotto in their garden, and the long rambles they would take by the sea-side, till they wondered how ever they could have been contented with the prospect of going to their cottage at once.

As the pony-chaise which the good baronet had lent for the day, drove up to take the bridal party to L——, for John and Sally were also to spend one day there, the two young ladies came to take leave of their protégées. Laura said, “Good-bye, Sally, I have consulted papa, and will undertake to allow you four shillings a week as long as Mrs. Maythorn lives. Here is a sovereign towards expenses; you will not, I am sure, mind changing your five pound note for the rest.”

Isabel said, “Good-bye, Fanny. I am very, very sorry to disappoint you of your treat at L——, but I intended to have borrowed the two pounds of Miss Laura, and I find she cannot lend them to me. Never mind, I am sure you will be happy enough in your little cottage. I never saw such a sweet little place as it is.” So the bridal party drove away.

In less than a week the cousins were established in their new abode. Sally settled and happy; but Fanny, unsettled, always expected the new carpet, the china tea-set, and the various other alterations that Isabel had suggested and promised to make. The young lady, however, was unfortunate with her money. At one time she lost a bank-note; at another, just as she was counting out money for the Brussels carpet, the new maid entered to tell her that sundry articles of dress were “past mending,” and must be immediately replaced. One thing after another nipped her generous intentions in the bud, and at last she was obliged to set out for her long-expected journey to France without having done more towards the fulfilment of her promises than call frequently on Fanny, to remind her that all her present arrangements were temporary, and that she should shortly have almost everything new. “Good-bye, Fanny,” said she at parting; “I shall often write to you, and send you money. I will not make any distinct promise, for I dare say I shall be able to do more than I should like to say now.”

Laura had given Sally a great many useful things for her cottage, but made no promise at parting. She said, “Be sure you write to me, Sally, from time to time, to say how you are going on, and tell me if you want help.”

When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her own had always wanted.

At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a sufficient remainder, to replace the tea seat.

“I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.”

A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth.

“Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be admired.

“I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally; “for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of things for three guineas.”

“Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?”

“Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my kitchen be bought to please any one but me?”

“John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”

Time passed on, and Fanny gave birth to a little girl. Isabel stood sponsor for her by proxy, sending her an embroidered cloak and lace cap, and desiring that she should be called by her own name. Little Bella was very sickly, and as her mother had not been able to procure her good warm clothing, or lay in a large stock of firing, she suffered greatly from cold during the severe winter that followed her birth. The spring and summer did not bring her better health; and as Fanny always attributed her delicacy to the want of proper warmth in her infancy, she took a great dislike to the Brussels carpet, which now lay in a roll behind a large chest, having been long ago taken up as a piece of inconvenient luxury in a kitchen. “I wish you could find a corner for it in your cottage, Sally,” said she, “for I never catch a sight of it without worrying myself to think how much flannels and coals I might have bought with the money it cost.”

Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendor of her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year she received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas said must have “spoilt a five-pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift, for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to see even a stranger in distress.”

“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or hear it cry.”

“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how pleased we were when it came?”

“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a great thing to send us, and that she wouldn’t have cared a straw to give us a little cash, that would have served us every bit as well.”

“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she wouldn’t, because she wished to please us.”

“Or herself, as John said; but maybe I am wrong; only it goes to my heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”

“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”

“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”

“You wouldn’t fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She has no pride of that sort.”

Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently, postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her behalf to her sister.

Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter. “Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its box.”

“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”

“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”

Eugène gave her a five-franc piece.

It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer. “I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.

“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no-doubt, contains a pretty sum.”

Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!

“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by this time, little Bella is better.”

Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side, shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but he saw and seized it in a moment.

“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,” said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child decently.”

Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone, “Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled faintly, he added, “I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money, and get the child something nourishing.”

Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed with a fine strong little boy, and, although Sally and Mrs. Maythorn devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from being separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.

When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could see some one standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed; then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep. Dr. Hart said you would wake up much better. Are you better?”

“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”

“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You expected me home, did you not?”

“Oh, thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is—but may-be I had best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”

“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few days to L——, with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”

“Oh, thank you—thank you—dear young lady, for the thought. I seem so bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss. How good and kind you are, Miss—you do all so well and so quietly!”

“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me, too, for I couldn’t have lived if you had died; and has found me work; and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss Laura—if I may be so bold to speak, Miss—Miss Laura does not give to please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the little ones by-and-by. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”

“Yes, Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle. Is that it?”

“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently not quite satisfied.

“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I love my sister very much.”

“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle, and think it a good deal better than impulse.”

V.
Bed.

“Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!”

Was the heart’s cry of the Ancient Mariner at the recollection of the blessed moment when the fearful curse of life in death fell off him, and the heavenly sleep first “slid into his soul.” “Blessings on sleep!” said honest Sancho Panza: “it wraps one all around like a mantle!”—a mantle for the weary human frame, lined softly, as with the down of the eider-duck, and redolent of the soothing odors of the poppy. The fabled cave of Sleep was in the land of Darkness. No ray of the sun, or moon, or stars, ever broke upon that night without a dawn. The breath of somniferous flowers floated in on the still air from the grotto’s mouth. Black curtains hung round the ever-sleeping god; the Dreams stood around his couch; Silence kept watch at the portals. Take the winged Dreams from the picture, and what is left? The sleep of matter.

The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of love or terror—what are they? Random freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments, and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance. Reverie deepens into the dreams of sleep—sleep into trance—trance borders on death. As the soul retires from the outer senses, as it escapes from the trammels of the flesh, it lives with increased power within. Spirit grows more spirit-like as matter slumbers. We can follow the development up to the last stage. What is beyond?

“And in that sleep of death, what dreams may come!”

says Hamlet—pausing on the brink of eternity, and vainly striving to scan the inscrutable. Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep and death—mysterious in itself, appalling in its hazards. Day after day noise has been hushed in the dormitory—month after month it has seen a human frame grow weaker and weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the hues of the grave colored the face of the living. And now he lies, motionless, pulseless, breathless. It is not sleep—is it death?

Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A home’s a home, however homely.” “Ay,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed, however bedly.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a bundle of paradoxes; we go to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret. Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamored of our curtained dwelling as if it were the land of Goshen or the cave of Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken! every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each morning weighing heavier and heavier on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic proverb says,—we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded, as it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in accordance with his precept. Literary men—among whom, as Bulwer says, a certain indolence seems almost constitutional—are not so clear upon this point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best authorities seem in favor of the latter. Early rising is the best elixir vitæ: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a century—an ordinary lifetime—at his desk; and yet had time to be the most modish of all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis of France.

Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as you love it, guard it warily. Over-indulgence is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it means to gratify. The natural times for our lying down and rising up are plain enough. Nature teaches us, and unsophisticated mankind followed her. Singing birds and opening flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre mark his setting. But “man hath sought out many inventions.” We prolong our days into the depths of night, and our nights into the splendor of day. It is a strange result of civilization! It is not merely occasioned by that thirst for varied amusement which characterizes an advanced stage of society—it is not that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades, require an artificial light, for all these are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere beneath the eye of day. What is the cause, we really are not philosopher enough to say; but the prevalence of the habit must have given no little pungency to honest Benjamin Franklin’s joke, when, one summer, he announced to the Parisians as a great discovery—that the sun rose each morning at four o’clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no end of candles by sitting up at night, they might rise in the morning and have light for nothing. Franklin’s “discovery,” we dare say, produced a laugh at the time, and things went on as before. Indeed, so universal is this artificial division of day and night, and so interwoven with it are the social habits, that we shudder at the very idea of returning to the natural order of things. A Robespierre could not carry through so stupendous a revolution. Nothing less than an avatar of Siva the destroyer—Siva with his hundred arms, turning off as many gas-pipes, and replenishing his necklace of human skulls by decapitating the leading conservatives—could have any chance of success; and, ten to one, with our gassy splendors, and seducing glitter, we should convert that pagan devil ere half his work was done.

But of all the inventions which perverse ingenuity has sought out, the most incongruous, the most heretical against both nature and art, is reading in bed. Turning rest into labor, learning into ridicule. A man had better be up. He is spoiling two most excellent things by attempting to join them. Study and sleep—how incongruous! It is an idle coupling of opposites, and shocks a sensible man as much as if he were to meet in the woods the apparition of a winged elephant. Only fancy an elderly or middle-aged man (for youth is generally orthodox on this point), sitting up in bed, spectacles on his nose, a Kilmarnock on his head, and his flannel jacket round his shivering shoulders,—doing what? Reading? It may be so—but he winks so often, possibly from the glare of the candle, and the glasses now and then slip so far down on his nose, and his hand now and then holds the volume so unsteadily, that if he himself didn’t assure us to the contrary, we should suppose him half asleep. We are sure it must be a great relief to him when the neglected book at last tumbles out of bed to such a distance that he cannot recover it.

Nevertheless, we have heard this extraordinary custom excused on the no less extraordinary ground of its being a soporific. For those who require such things, Marryat gives a much simpler recipe—namely, to mentally repeat any scraps of poetry you can recollect; if your own, so much the better. The monks of old, in a similar emergency, used to repeat the seven Penitential Psalms. Either of these plans, we doubt not, will be found equally efficacious, if one is able to use them—if anxiety of mind does not divert him from his task, or the lassitude of illness disable him for attempting it. Sleep, alas! is at times fickle and coy; and, like most sublunary friends, forsakes us when most wanted. Reading in that repertory of many curious things, the “Book of the Farm,” we one day met with the statement that “a pillow of hops will ensure sleep to a patient in a delirious fever when every other expedient fails.” We made a note of it. Heaven forbid that the recipe should ever be needed for us or ours! but the words struck a chord of sympathy in our heart with such poor sufferers, and we saddened with the dread of that awful visitation. The fever of delirium! when incoherent words wander on the lips of genius; when the sufferer stares strangely and vacantly on his ministering friends, or starts with freezing horror from the arms of familiar love! Ah! what a dread tenant has the dormitory then. No food taken for the body, no sleep for the brain! a human being surging with diabolic strength against his keepers—a human frame gifted with superhuman vigor only the more rapidly to destroy itself! Less fearful to the eye, but more harrowing to the soul, is the dormitory whose walls enclose the sleepless victim of Remorse. No poppies or mandragora for him! His malady ends only with the fever of life. Ends? Grief, anxiety, “the thousand several ills that flesh is heir to,” pass away before the lapse of time or the soothings of love, and sleep once more folds its dove-like wings above the couch.

“If there be a regal solitude,” says Charles Lamb, “it is a bed. How the patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without control! How king-like he sways his pillow,—tumbling and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full-length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated on him as his only duty. ’Tis the two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.”

In this climate a sight of the sun is prized; but we love to see it most from bed. A dormitory fronting the east, therefore, so that the early sunbeams may rouse us to the dewy beauties of morning, we love. Let there also be festooned roses without the window, that on opening it the perfume may pervade the realms of bed. Our night-bower should be simple—neat as a fairy’s cell, and ever perfumed with the sweet air of heaven. It is not a place for showy things, or costly. As fire is the presiding genius in other rooms, so let water, symbol of purity, be in the ascendant here; water, fresh and unturbid as the thoughts that here make their home—water, to wash away the dust and sweat of a weary world. Let no fracas disturb the quiet of the dormitory. We go there for repose. Our tasks and our cares are left outside, only to be put on again with our hat and shoes in the morning. It is an asylum from the bustle of life—it is the inner shrine of our household gods—and should be respected accordingly. We never entered during the ordinary process of bed-making—pillows tossed here, blankets and sheets pitched hither and thither in wildest confusion, chairs and pitchers in the middle of the floor, feathers and dust everywhere—without a jarring sense that sacrilege was going on, and that the genius loci had departed. Rude hands were profaning the home of our slumbers!

A sense of security pervades the dormitory. A healthy man in bed is free from everything but dreams, and once in a life-time, or after adjudging the Cheese Premium at an Agricultural Show—the nightmare. We once heard a worthy gentleman, blessed with a very large family of daughters, declare he had no peace in his house except in bed. There we feel as if in a city of refuge, secure alike from the brawls of earth and the storms of heaven. Lightning, say old ladies, won’t come through, blankets. Even tigers, says Humboldt, “will not attack a man in his hammock.” Hitting a man when he’s down is stigmatized as villanous all the world over; and lions will rather sit with an empty stomach for hours than touch a man before he awakes. Tricks upon a sleeper! Oh, villanous! Every perpetrator of such unutterable treachery should be put beyond the pale of society. The First of April should have no place in the calendar of the dormitory. We would have the maxim, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” extended to the human race. And an angry dog, certainly, is a man roused needlessly from his slumbers. What an outcry we Northmen raised against the introduction of Greenwich time, which defrauded us of fifteen minutes’ sleep in the morning; and how indiscriminate the objurgations lavished upon printers’ devils! Of all sinners against the nocturnal comfort of literary men, these imps are the foremost; and possibly it was from their malpractices in such matters that they first acquired their diabolic cognomen.

The nightcap is not an elegant head-dress, but its comfort is undeniable. It is a diadem of night; and what tranquillity follows our self-coronation! It is priceless as the invisible cap of Fortunatus; and, viewless beneath its folds, our cares cannot find us out. It is graceless. Well; what then? It is not meant for the garish eye of day, nor for the quizzing glass of our fellow-men, or of the ridiculing race of women; neither does it outrage any taste for the beautiful in the happy sleeper himself. We speak as bachelors, to whom the pleasures of a manifold existence are unknown. Possibly the æsthetics of night are not uncared for when a man has another self to please, and when a pair of lovely eyes are fixed admiringly on his upper story; but such is the selfishness of human nature, that we suspect this abnegation of comfort will not long survive the honeymoon. The French, ever enamored of effect, and who, we verily believe, even sleep, “posé,” sometimes substitute the many-colored silken handkerchief for the graceless “bonnet-de-nuit.” But all such substitutes are less comfortable and more troublesome; and of all irritating things, the most irritable is a complex operation in undressing. Æsthetics at night, and for the weary! No, no. The weary man frets at every extra button or superfluous knot, he counts impatiently every second that keeps him from his couch, and flies to the arms of sleep as to those of his mistress. Nevertheless, French novelette writers make a great outcry against nightcaps. We remember an instance. A husband—rather good-looking fellow—suspects that his wife is beginning to have too tender thoughts towards a glossy-ringletted Lothario who is then staying with them. So, having accidentally discovered that Lothario slept in a huge peeked nightcowl, and knowing that ridicule would prove the most effectual disenchanter, he fastened a string to his guest’s bell, and passed it into his own room.

At the dead of night, when all were fast asleep, suddenly Lothario’s bell rang furiously. Upstarted the lady—“their guest must be ill;”—and, accompanied by her husband, elegantly coiffed in a turbaned silk handkerchief, she entered the room whence the alarum had sounded. They find Lothario sitting up in bed—his cowl rising pyramid-fashion, a fool’s cap all but the bells—bewildered and in ludicrous consternation at being surprised thus by the fair Angelica; and, unable to conceal his chagrin, he completes his discomfiture by bursting out in wrathful abuse of his laughing host for so betraying his weakness for nightcaps.

The Poetry of the Dormitory! It is an inviting but too delicate a subject for our rough hands. Do not the very words call up a vision? By the light of the stars we see a lovely head resting on a downy pillow; the bloom of the rose is on that young cheek, and the half-parted lips murmur as in a dream: “Edward!” Love is lying light at her heart, and its fairy wand is showing her visions. May her dreams be happy! “Edward!” Was it a sigh that followed that gentle invocation? What would the youth give to hear that murmur,—to gaze like yonder stars on his slumbering love. Hush! are the morning-stars singing together—a lullaby to soothe the dreamer? A low dulcet strain floats in through the window; and soon, mingling with the breathings of the lute, the voice of youth. The harmony penetrates through the slumbering senses to the dreamer’s heart; and ere the golden curls are lifted from the pillow, she is conscious of all. The serenade begins anew. What does she hear?

“Stars of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her her lover keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!”

VI.
The Home of Woodruffe the Gardener.