A little farther on, was a noisy excited crowd round two men carrying a shutter, on which was strapped the bleeding body (a handkerchief spread over the face) of a poor bricklayer, who had fallen a few minutes before from the top of some scaffolding in the neighborhood, and was at that instant in the agonies of death—leaving behind him a wife and nine children, for whom the poor fellow had long slaved from morning to night, and who were now ignorant of the frightful fate which had befallen him, and that they were left utterly destitute.
There, was a skinny little terrified urchin, about eight years old, with nothing to conceal his dirty, half-starved body, but a tattered man's coat, pinned round him; dying with hunger, he had stolen a villanous-looking bare bone—scarce a halfpenny worth of meat upon it; and a brawny constable, his knuckles fiercely dug into the poor little offender's neck, (with his tight grasp,) was leading him off, followed by his shrieking mother, to the police-office, whence he would be committed to Newgate; and thence, after two or three months' imprisonment, and being flogged—miserable little wretch!—by the common hangman, (who had hanged the child's father some six months before,) he would be discharged—to return probably several times and undergo a similar process; then to be transported; and finally be hanged, as had been his father before him.
These startling scenes passed before Mr. Aubrey, in the course of a five minutes' walk down Saffron Hill—during which period he now and then paused, and gazed around him with feelings of pity, of astonishment, of disgust, which presently blended and deepened into a dark sense of horror. These scenes, to some so fatally familiar—fatally, I mean, on account of the INDIFFERENCE which familiarity is apt to induce—to Mr. Aubrey, had on them all the frightful glare of novelty. He had never witnessed anything of the sort before; and had no notion of its existence. The people residing on each side of the Hill, however, seemed accustomed to such scenes; which they appeared to view with the same dreadful indifference with which a lamb led to the slaughter is beheld by one who has spent his life next door to the slaughter-house. The Jew clothesman, before whose shop-window, arrested by the horrifying spectacle of the bleeding wretch borne along to the hospital—Mr. Aubrey had remained standing for a second or two—took the opportunity to assail him, with insolent and pertinacious importunities to purchase some articles of clothing! A fat baker, and a greasy eating-house keeper, stood each at his door, one with folded arms, the other with his hands thrust into his pockets—both of them gazing with a grin at two curs fighting in the middle of the street—oh, how utterly insensible to the ravenous want around them! The pallid spectres haunting the gin-shop—a large splendid building at the corner—gazed with sunken lack-lustre eye, and drunken apathy, at the shattered man who was being borne by.
Ah, God! what scenes were these! And of what other hidden wretchedness and horror did they not indicate the existence! "Gracious mercy!" thought Aubrey, "what a world have I been living in! And this dismal aspect of it exposed to me just when I have lost all power of relieving its wretchedness!"—here a thrill of anguish passed through his heart—"but woe, woe is me! if at this moment I had a thousand times ten thousand a-year, how far would it go amid the scenes similar to this, abounding in this one city? Oh God! what unutterable horror must be in store for those who, intrusted by Thee with an overflowing abundance, disregard the misery around them in guilty selfishness and indolence, or"—he shuddered—"expend it in sensuality and profligacy! Will Dives become sensible of his misconduct, only when he shall have entered upon his next stage of existence, and of punishment? Oh, merciful Creator! how is my heart wrung by the sight of horrors such as these? Awful and mysterious Author of our existence, Father of the spirits of all flesh, are these states of being which Thou hast ordained? Are these Thy children? Are these my fellow-creatures? Oh, help me! help me! my weak heart faints; my clouded understanding is confounded! I cannot—insect that I am!—discern the scope and end of Thy economy, of Thy dread government of the world; yet blessed be the name of my God!—I KNOW that thou reignest! though clouds and darkness are around thee! righteousness and judgment are the habitation of thy throne! with righteousness shalt thou judge the world, AND THE PEOPLE WITH EQUITY!"
Like as the lesser light is lost in the greater, so, in Aubrey's case, was the lesser misery he suffered, merged in his sense of the greater misery he witnessed. What, after all, was his position, in comparison with that of those now before and around him? What cause of thankfulness had he not, for the merciful mildness of even the dispensations of Providence towards him? Such were his thoughts and feelings, as he stood gazing at the objects which had called them forth, when his eye lit on the figure of Mr. Gammon approaching him. He was threading his way, apparently lost in thought, through the scenes which had so powerfully affected Mr. Aubrey; who stood eying him with a sort of unconscious intensity, as if secure from his observation, till he was actually addressed by him.
"Mr. Aubrey!" exclaimed Gammon, courteously saluting him. Each took off his hat to the other. Though Aubrey hardly intended it, he found himself engaged in conversation with Gammon, who, in a remarkably feeling tone, and with a happy flattering deference of manner, intimated that he could guess the subject of Mr. Aubrey's thoughts, namely, the absorbing matters which they had been discussing together.
"No, it is not so," said Mr. Aubrey, with a sigh, as he walked on—Gammon keeping easily beside him—"I have been profoundly affected by scenes which I have witnessed in the immediate neighborhood of your office, since quitting it; what misery! what horror!"
"Ah, Mr. Aubrey!"—exclaimed Gammon, echoing the sigh of his companion, as they slowly ascended Holborn Hill, separate, but side by side—"what a checkered scene is life! Guilt and innocence—happiness and misery—wealth and poverty—disease and health—wisdom and folly—sensuality and refinement—piety and irreligion—how strangely intermingled we behold them, wherever we look on life—and how difficult, to the philosopher, to detect the principle"——
"Difficult?—Impossible! Impossible! God alone can do so!"—exclaimed Mr. Aubrey, thoughtfully.
"Comparison, I have often thought," said Gammon, after a pause—"of one's own troubles with the greater misfortunes endured by others, is beneficial or prejudicial—consolatory or disheartening—according as the mind of him who makes the comparison is well or ill regulated—possessed or destitute, of moral and religious principle!"