These belong almost entirely to the class of what are called Chartists; that is, advocates of universal suffrage. They are this, through good and through evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be more fully represented in the legislative body, has met with from that body, has brought them more and more into collision with the power of the state, more and more to base their demands in opposition, even to the higher principles of justice: for they overlook the duty of rendering themselves worthy of the franchise by sound education. But the fault here, in the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid machinery and the hum of labor, without schools, without religious or moral worth; hardened by hard labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of life, they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in harmony with life's higher educational influences, the blessings of which they had never experienced. Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all kinds will and must nourish here in concealment among the strong and daily augmenting masses of a population, restrained only by the fear of the still more mighty powers which may be turned against them, and by labor for their daily needs, so long as those powers are sufficing. And perhaps the American slave-states are right when they say, in reference to this condition of things, "England lies at our feet—England can not do without our cotton. If the manufacturers of England must come to a stand, then has she a popular convulsion at her door." Perhaps it may be so; for these hosts of manufacturing workmen, neglected in the beginning by society, neglected by church and state, look upon them merely as exacting and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them, they have banded together, and established schools for their own children, where only the elements of practical science are admitted, and from which religious and moral instruction are strictly excluded. In truth, a volcanic foundation for society, and which now, for some time past, has powerfully arrested the attention of the most thinking men of England.
But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has already begun to penetrate with an organizing power; and over the dark profound hovers a spirit which can and will divide the darkness from the light, and prepare a new creation.
I sought the manufacturing towns from a sense of duty, and the commands of conscience. I was anxious to see this side of human life. But this done, I thought I might do something for my own pleasure. I was in England chiefly for this purpose. I must follow the impulse of my heart; I must make a pilgrimage to the grave of Shakspeare. For the older I have become, the more that I have lived and learned, the more valuable have two good artists become to me—the more have I had to thank—Beethoven and Shakspeare.
From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of the fourth of October, by the railway to Leamington, and thence, alone in a little carriage, to Stratford-on-Avon.
TRUE COURAGE.—A TALE OF TATTERSHALL CASTLE.
In the summer vacation of 183-, a party of gay young collegians visited Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire. This remarkably noble ruin consists of a single lofty keep, rising to the height of two hundred feet, the interior being open from summit to basement. Mighty oaken beams once, however, spanned the massive walls, supporting floors which formed stories of varying height. Many of these beams have fallen to the basement, completely rotten, through shameful exposure to the weather ever since the roof crumbled away; others still pertinaciously hang, more or less broken and decayed, but, in a majority of instances, seem as if a strong gust of eddying wind would send them down crashing, to mingle their fragments with those already mouldering below.
The party were in high spirits. They had drunk old wines, and their young blood flowed hotly in their veins; they had laughed, joked, and talked themselves into wild excitement. About half way up to the castle turrets there is a sort of open landing, which goes along one wall of the structure; and on to this landing the party stepped from the grand spiral staircase they had hitherto been ascending, and there paused a moment to look about them. The scene was striking. A few beams sprung across just below their feet; a few thick-moted rays of sun pierced through the adjoining loop-holes; a few fleecy cloudlets flitted athwart the blue ether high overhead. Startled by the noisy visitors, a number of dusky jackdaws flew out of their holes up and down the walls, and, after chattering their decided disapprobation of being disturbed, made half-a-dozen whirling circuits of the interior, rising rapidly upward, until they disappeared.
Immediately afterward, a great white owl projected its visage from a hole close above where one of the beams joined the opposite wall, and, frightedly peering with its great dazzled eyes, the harmless creature bewilderedly popped from its hole on to the beam, and having made a few feeble flutterings with its wings, remained quite stationary, crouched in a ball-like figure, close to the wall.
"Oh, Deschamp," exclaimed one of the party to a friend at his side, who was plucking the long gray moss of a peculiar species, which literally clothes the castle walls inside and out, "look yonder at Minerva's bird."
"Ha! ha!" chorused the company—"a veritable owl!"