Chapter II: Part 2

6. Blind bird-organists. Though most blind persons either naturally possess or soon acquire an ear for music, there are yet numbers who, from the want of it or from some other cause, never make any proficiency as performers on an instrument. Blindness, too, is often accompanied with some other disability, which disqualifies its victims for learning such trades as they might otherwise be taught. Hence many, rather than remain in the workhouse, take to grinding music in the streets. Here we are struck with one remarkable fact: the Irishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, or the Savoyard, at least so soon as he is a man, and able to lug it about, is provided with an instrument with which he can make a noise in the world, and prefer his clamorous claim for a recompense; while the poor blind Englishman has nothing but a diminutive box of dilapidated whistles, which you may pass fifty times without hearing it, let him grind as hard as he will. It is generally nothing more than an old worn-out bird-organ, in all likelihood charitably bestowed by some compassionate Poll Sweedlepipes, who has already used it up in the education of his bull-finches. The reason, we opine, must be that the major part, if not the whole, of the peripatetic instruments of the metropolis are the property of speculators, who let them out on hire, and that the blind man, not being considered an eligible customer, is precluded from the advantage of their use. However this may be, the poor blind grinder is almost invariably found furnished as we have described him, jammed up in some cranny or corner in a third-rate locality, where, having opened or taken off the top of his box, that the curious spectator may behold the mystery of his too quiet music--the revolving barrel, the sobbing bellows, and the twelve leaden and ten wooden pipes--he turns his monotonous handle throughout the live-long day, in the all but vain appeal for the commiseration of his fellows. This is really a melancholy spectacle, and one which we would gladly miss altogether in our casual rounds.

7. The piano-grinders are by far the most numerous of the handle-turning fraternity. The instrument they carry about with them is familiar to the dwellers in most of the towns in England. It is a miniature cabinet-piano, without the keys or finger-board, and is played by similar mechanical means to that which gives utterance to the hand-organ; but of course it requires no bellows. There is one thing to be said in favour of these instruments--they do not make much noise, and consequently are no very great nuisance individually. The worst thing against them is the fact, that they are never in tune, and therefore never worth the hearing. After grinding for twelve or fourteen hours a day for four or five years, they become perfect abominations; and luckless is the fate of the poor little stranger condemned to perpetual companionship with a villainous machine, whose every tone is the cause of offence to those whose charity he must awaken into exercise, or go without a meal. These instruments are known to be the property of certain extensive proprietors in the city, some of whom have hundreds of them grinding daily in every quarter of the town. Some few are let out on hire--the best at a shilling a day; the old and worn-out ones as low as two or three pence; but the great majority of them are ground by young Italians shipped to this country for the especial purpose by the owners of the instruments. These descendants of the ancient Romans figure in Britain in a very different plight from that of their renowned ancestors. They may be encountered in troops sallying forth from the filthy purlieus of Leather Lane, at about nine or ten in the morning, each with his awkward burden strapped to his back, and supporting his steps with a stout staff, which also serves to support the instrument when playing. Each one has his appointed beat, and he is bound to bring home a certain prescribed sum to entitle him to a share in the hot supper prepared for the evening meal. We have more than once, when startled by the sound of the everlasting piano within an hour of midnight, questioned the belated grinder, and invariably received for answer, that he had not yet been able to collect the sum required of him. Still there can be no doubt that some of them contrive to save money; inasmuch as we occasionally see an active fellow set up on his own account, and furnished with an instrument immensely superior to those of his less prosperous compatriots. So great is the number of these wandering Italian pianists, that their condition has attracted the attention of their more wealthy countrymen, who, in conjunction with a party of benevolent English gentlemen, have set on foot an association for the express purpose of imparting instruction to poor Italians of all grades, of whom the vagabond musicians form the largest section.

It is easy to recognise the rule adopted in the distribution of the instruments among the grinders: the stoutest fellow, or he who can take the best care of it, gets the best piano; while the shattered and rickety machine goes to the urchin of ten or twelve, who can scarcely drag it a hundred yards without resting. It is to be supposed that the instruments are all rated according to their quality. There is at this moment wandering about the streets of London a singular and pitiable object, whose wretched lot must be known to hundreds of thousands, and who affords in his own person good evidence of the strictness of the rule above alluded to, as well as of the rigour with which the trade is carried on. We refer to a ragged, shirtless, and harmlessly insane Italian lad, who, under the guardianship of one of the piano-mongers, is driven forth daily into the streets, carrying a blackened and gutted, old piano-case, in which two strings only of the original scale remain unbroken. The poor unwashed innocent transports himself as quickly as possible to the genteelest neighbourhood he can find, and with all the enthusiasm of a Jullien, commences his monotonous grind. Three turns of the handle, and the all but defunct instrument ejaculates 'tink;' six more inaudible turns, and then the responding string answers 'tank.' 'Tink--tank' is the sum-total of his performance, to any defects in which he is as insensible as a blind man is to colour. As a matter of course, he gets ill-treated, mobbed, pushed about, and upset by the blackguard scamps about town; and were it not for the police, who have rescued him times without number from the hands of his persecutors, he would long ere now have been reduced to as complete a ruin as his instrument. In one respect, he is indeed already worse off than the dilapidated piano: he is dumb as well as silly, and can only utter one sound--a cry of alarm of singular intensity; this cry forms the climax of pleasure to the wretches who dog his steps, and this, unmoved by his silent tears and woful looks, they goad him to shriek forth for their express gratification. We have stumbled upon him at near eleven at night, grinding away with all his might in a storm of wind and rain, perfectly unconscious of either, and evidently delighted at his unusual freedom from interruption.

8. Flageolet-organists and pianists. It is a pleasure to award praise where praise is due, and it may be accorded to this class of grinders, who are, to our minds, the elite of the profession. We stated above that some of the piano-grinders contrive, notwithstanding their difficult position, to save money and set up for themselves. It is inevitable that the faculty of music must be innate with some of these wandering pianists, and it is but natural that these should succeed the best, and be the first to improve their condition. The instrument which combines a flageolet-stop with a piano is generally found in the possession of young fellows who, by dint of a persevering and savage economy, have saved sufficient funds to procure it. Indeed, in common hands, it would be of less use than the commonest instrument, because it requires frequent--more than daily--tuning, and would therefore be of no advantage to a man with no ear. Unless the strings were in strict unison with the pipes, the discordance would be unbearable, and as this in the open air can hardly be the case for many hours together, they have to be rectified many times in the course of a week. As might be reasonably supposed, these instruments are comparatively few. When set to slow melodies, the flageolet taking the air, and the piano a well-arranged accompaniment, the effect is really charming, and, there is little reason to doubt, is found as profitable to the producer as it is pleasing to the hearer. They are to be met with chiefly at the west end of the town, and on summer evenings beneath the lawyers' windows in the neighbourhood of some of the Inns of Court.

9. The hurdy-gurdy player. We have placed this genius last, because, though essentially a most horrid grinder, he, too, is in some sort a performer. In London, there may be said to be two classes of them--little hopping, skipping, jumping, reeling Savoyard or Swiss urchins, who dance and sing, and grind and play, doing, like Cæsar, four things at once, and whom you expect every moment to see rolling on the pavement, but who continue, like so many kittens, to pitch on their feet at last, notwithstanding all their antics--and men with sallow complexions, large dark eyes, and silver ear-rings, who stand erect and tranquil, and confer a dignity, not to say a grace, even upon the performance of the hurdy-gurdy. The boys for the most part do not play any regular tune, having but few keys to their instruments, often not even a complete octave. The better instruments of the adult performers have a scale of an octave and a half, and sometimes two octaves, and they perform melodies and even harmonies with something like precision, and with an effect which, to give it its due praise, supplies a very tolerable caricature of the Scotch bagpipes. These gentry are not much in favour either with the genuine lovers of music or the lovers of quiet, and they know the fact perfectly well. They hang about the crowded haunts of the common people, and find their harvest in a vulgar jollification, or an extempore 'hop' at the door of a suburban public-house on a summer night. There are a few old-women performers on this hybrid machine, one of whom is familiar to the public through the dissemination of her _vera effigies_ in a contemporary print.

The above are all the grinders which observation has enabled us to identify as capable of classification. The reader may, if he likes, suppose them to be the metropolitan representatives of the nine Muses--and that, in fact, in some sort they are, seeing that they are the embodiments to a certain extent of the musical tastes of a section at least of the inhabitants of London; though, if we are asked which is Melpomene? which is Thalia? &c. &c. we must adopt the reply of the showman to the child who asked which was the lion and which was the dog, and received for answer: 'Whichever you like, my little dear.'

With respect to all these grinders, one thing is remarkable: they are all, with the exception of a small savour of Irishmen, foreigners. Scarcely one Englishman, not one Scot, will be found among the whole tribe; and this fact is as welcome to us as it is singular, because it speaks volumes in favour of the national propensity, of which we have reason to be proud, to be ever doing something, producing something, applying labour to its legitimate purpose, and not turning another man's handle to grind the wind. Yet there is, alas! a scattered and characteristic tribe of vagabond English music-grinders, and to these we must turn a moment's attention ere we finally close the list. We must call them, for we know no more appropriate name, cripple-grinders. It is impossible to carry one's explorations very far through the various districts of London without coming upon one or more samples of this unfortunate tribe. Commerce maims and mutilates her victims as effectually as war, though not in equal numbers; and men and lads without arms, or without legs, or without either, and men doubled up and distorted, and blasted blind and hideous with gunpowder, who have yet had the misfortune to escape death, are left without limbs or eyesight, often with shattered intellects, to fight the battle of life, at fearful odds. Had they been reduced to a like miserable condition while engaged in killing their fellow-creatures on the field of battle or on the deck of carnage, a grateful country would have housed them in a palace, and abundantly supplied their every want; but they were merely employed in procuring the necessaries of life for their fellows in the mine or the factory, and as nobody owes them any gratitude for that, they must do what they can. And behold what they do: they descend, being fit for nothing else, to the level of the foreign music-grinder, and, mounted on a kind of bed-carriage, are drawn about the streets of London by their wives or children; being furnished with a blatant hand-organ of last century's manufacture, whose ear-torturing growl draws the attention of the public to their woful plight, they extort that charity which would else fail to find them out. If there be something gratifying in the fact, that this is the only class of Britons who follow such an inglorious profession, there is nothing very flattering in the consideration, that even these are compelled to it by inexorable necessity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Among some of the continental nations, Justice, though blind, is not supposed to be deaf; she has, on the contrary, a musical ear, and compels the various grinders of harmony to keep their instruments in tune, under the penalty of a heavy fine. In some of the German cities, the police have summary jurisdiction in offences musical, and are empowered to demand a certificate, with which every grinder is bound to be furnished, shewing the date of the last tuning of his instrument. If he perpetrate false harmony, and his certificate be run out, he is mulcted in the fine. Such a by-law would be a real bonus in London.

A VOICE FROM THE DIGGINGS.

The voices that have come from the diggings in California and Australia have hitherto been so loud and so many, that they have served only to confuse. We have the image before our fancy of a vast crowd of human beings hastening over seas and deserts towards certain geographical points, where they meet, struggle, fix. We see them picking up lumps of gold from the surface, or digging them out of the earth, or collecting the glittering dust by sifting and washing; and then we hear of vast torrents of the precious metal finding their way into Europe, threatening to swamp us all with absolute wealth, and confound and travesty the whole monetary transactions of the world. What we don't see, is the gold itself. We should like, if it were only out of curiosity, to feel a handful of it in our pocket: but we grope in vain. A sovereign costs twenty shillings, as before; and twenty shillings are as hard to come at as ever. Nevertheless, we believe in the unseen presence of that slave-genius, who lends himself, with a sickly smile, to the service of mankind, and buys when we think he is sold! We have faith in bills of lading, and accept without question any amount that is reported to lie dormant in the reservoir of the Bank of England: only we wonder in private whether the importations of the precious metal are likely to increase permanently in greater proportion than the population in this quarter of the globe, and the spread of taste, comfort, and luxury, calling every day new arts into existence, perfecting old ones, and distributing wealth throughout the constantly widening circle of talent and industry.

But our present business is with the diggings and the diggers. We have often wished we could interrogate one of those unquiet spirits in the manner of Macbeth--'What is't ye do?' How do you manage? By what signs do you know a locality that is likely to repay your pains? What are your instruments, your machinery? What do you conceive to be the prospects of your singular trade? And, in fact, our curiosity is at this moment to a certain extent gratified: a Voice has been wafted across the ocean to our private ear, and, undisturbed by the thousand other tongues of the diggings, we can listen to an account, distinct so far as it goes, of the whole process of gold-hunting. The voice emanates from Mr S. Rutter, of Sydney, whose experience has lain both in the Californian and Australian mines, and we propose putting together, in as intelligible a way as we can, the rough hints with which we have been favoured.

Mr Rutter, on the 24th of May last, left Sydney for the Ophir diggings, with a party, including himself, of four individuals. A sleeping partner remained behind, whose duty it was to furnish the means of conveyance for the first trip; but the four travellers entered with each other into a more precise agreement, the chief articles of which we give, as being common in such adventures:--

I. We solemnly agree to stand by each other in all circumstances.

II. Each man is to come provided with firearms.

III. The capital is to be contributed equally, or credit given, as may be agreed to by the majority.

IV. The profit or loss to be equally divided.

V. In the event of death or disablement occurring to any of the party, his share of the stock and profits is to be immediately handed over to his friends.

On this paction being signed, the party set forth, provided with L.100 worth of goods, a cart and a team of horses, and reached Paramatta, a distance of eighteen miles, the first night, although they were obliged to send back one of the horses, which had proved to be useless. Here Mr Rutter slept in a bed for the last time during four months; and the next day, having purchased another horse, and sold some of their goods to lighten the wagon, they set forth again towards evening. The road was nothing more than a dray-track, to which the horses were unequal; and after proceeding a few miles, they were detained at the village of Prospect for a week, till one of the partners had returned to Sydney, and brought back a pair of bush-horses and a new cart. As they proceeded the next day, they found the track over which they travelled become more and more populous; till, on crossing the Macquarrie, they encamped in the midst of thirteen teams of cattle and their thirteen companies, all bound upon the same errand as themselves.

On the 12th of June, in the dusk of the evening, they reached the summit of a hill overlooking their destination. The Summerhill Creek lay before them, with the camp-fires of fifty or sixty huts; and as they descended into the midst, the inhabitants of this village of the desert were returning from work with laughter and rude merriment. After pitching their camp, and taking some refreshment, they proceeded anxiously to inquire the news; and that night they turned in with no very bright anticipations, after learning that the creek was high and goods low, the weather alternating between rain and frost, the mines overcrowded, and superfluous hands deserting them fast. They struggled for awhile against these evil auguries; they even contrived, with great labour, to pick up an ounce or two of gold; but at length, losing heart, the party broke up on the 23d, and all went home but our adventurer.

His geological and mechanical knowledge enabled him to obtain a partnership with another band of gold-hunters then at work; and after spending some days in _prospecting_ on account of the new concern, he found 'a chink he liked the look of,' which appeared to have been partially worked. Licences were accordingly taken out, the commissioner being on the spot, and forty-five feet of frontage to the creek were marked off. As soon as the river became a little lower, they began in earnest to dig a race for turning the course of the water. Their pump was made and fixed ready to drain; a dam was emptied; six ounces of gold were obtained as an earnest of what they might expect; and then it began to rain, and the creek to roar, and the whole of their machinery was swept away.

Here was a new mishap: but these things will happen in the diggings; and so our adventurers, agreeing to pay the commissioner a monthly licence for their ground, intending to return in the dry weather to work it, removed bag and baggage to another part of the river. Here they dug away, but it appears with no tempting success; and they took care to return to the commissioner in time, as they thought, to implement their monthly bargain. On tendering the money for their licence, however, they discovered that they were just half an hour too late, and that the functionary had disposed of their forty-five feet to another bidder. What to do now? They fell in with a man, an old friend of Mr Rutter, just setting off on a journey of sixty-two miles to the north, where he told them a piece of gold had been found weighing 106 lbs. This invaluable man they instantly took into partnership, and purchasing fresh horses, they struck their camp, and followed their new companion across the country, in search of a place called the Devil's Hole, near the World's End. It is no wonder they lost their way. As there was no such thing as a road, they were obliged to transport their goods on the horses' backs; and the interesting nature of their journey may be guessed at from the fact, that they had to cross a creek with steep banks sixteen times in the course of five miles.

They at length reached the Louisa Diggings, near those quartz-ridges where, in fact, a 106 lb. lump of gold had been found. They encamped in the dark; and getting up betimes the next morning, looked eagerly out on this land of promise. It was a dull, dreary morning, and a heavy continuous rain plashed upon the earth. About 200 persons were taking the air in this watery atmosphere, their dress and movements corresponding well with the aspect of the hour. Some were covered with an old sack, some with a blanket, some with a dripping cloak, but all glided slowly about in the rain, with a stick in their hands, and their eyes fixed upon the ground. These phantoms were gold-hunters; and the silent company was immediately joined by our adventurers, who glided and poked like the rest. The ground was new, and during two days gold was obtained in this way, from a particle the size of a pin's head to a lump of nearly an ounce. When the surface was exhausted, digging commenced; but the soil was too tough for the common cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the country together to Maitland, prospecting on the way.

The place where the large mass of gold was found is an intersection between two quartz-ridges, rising from a high table-land in the midst of a congeries of mountains, offshoots from the range that extends from Wilson's Point, on the south, to Cape York, on the north. The clay soil covers many acres below and around the ridges, and wherever it was prospected by our adventurer, gold was found. On the 12th of September, he reached Maitland; and here he found a letter awaiting him, which determined him to choose a new hunting-ground. Some years before, it seems, a man he knew, who was at that time a shepherd in the Wellington District, while crossing the country on his master's business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for two days. While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a curiosity. At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney. The result was, that he connected himself with a party of adventurers, and they all set forth for the place where he had rested among the gullies. His companions proved treacherous; and when they had come sufficiently near to be able, as they thought, to find the spot without his assistance, they turned him adrift. They sought the golden rock for three days--but in vain; and he went back to Sydney, to invite Mr Rutter to accompany him. Here ends our narrative for the present; and a most instructive one it is. The search for gold, our informant tells us plainly, is a mere lottery, its results depending almost wholly upon chance. Plenty as the metal is, it frequently costs twenty shillings the sovereign's worth; and, in short, we are at that point of transition when the mania is dying away, and the science has not begun. When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the auriferous creeks, if they will be satisfied with a profit of seven or eight shillings a day.

According to his experience, the place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver. When the gold is found in rivers, or on their banks, prediction is vain: nothing will do but the actual trial by the wash-pan. But where there is a bar or sand-bank, the richest deposit will always be on the side of the bank presented to the descending stream. The metal in such digging is almost invariably found in small spangles, that appear to have been granular particles crushed or rolled flat by some enormous pressure. In California, these spangles were the beginning of the gold-finding. When the streams and their banks were well searched, the crowds of adventurers tried, in desperation, what they could do by digging deep holes in the plains; and there the metal was found in such different forms as to indicate quite a different process of deposition. Some of these holes were productive--although it was severe labour to dig fifteen or eighteen feet through a hard soil merely as an experiment; and in the course of time the plains were covered with tents. The influx of adventurers continued; and the old diggers, dissatisfied with gains that seemed to the new prodigious, retired further and further back, and began to grope in the terraces on the sides of volcanic hills, and among the detritus of extinct craters. Here the harvest was rich, and as the crowning effort of the gold-passion, unassisted by machinery, they actually in some cases cut away the sides of the hills! 'My own impression is,' concludes our informant on this subject, 'that, both in California and Australia, the chances of individual enterprise, and even of small companies, are decreasing rapidly; but that when the mines so wrought have ceased to pay, capital and machinery, directed by science, will receive profitable employment for ages to come.'

The wash-pan we have mentioned may be of tin, if not required to be used with quicksilver, otherwise of copper or wood; but of whatever material made, it should be some 15 inches in diameter at the top, 10 or 11 at the bottom, and 5, or 5-1/2 inches deep. The manner of using this is learned only by practice and observation, and consists in a peculiar motion, by which the heavier substances sink to the bottom and remain there, while the soluble and lighter parts are washed out. The principal use of the wash-pan is in rewashing the partially washed 'stuff' taken from the rocker, and in prospecting to ascertain by trial the value of a new place.

This rocker, or cradle, may be made of half-inch softwood, and consists of a trough 10 inches deep, 18 inches broad, and 4 feet long, closed at the broad end, and open at the other; with a transverse bar at the upper part, two feet from the broad end, to receive the tray. This machine is placed on rockers, like a cradle, and deposited so near the water that, when at work, the man who rocks with his left hand may be able to reach the water with a small tin baler, provided with a wooden handle two feet long. A bucketful of the earth to be washed is thrown into the tray, and the person who is to rock the cradle taking a balerful of water, throws it uniformly on the mass in the tray, and keeps rocking and washing till the gold becomes obvious. These are the simpler implements of gold-hunting; and provided with them, the little company of adventurers pitch their tent and continue to dig, till they come to earth they think will pay for washing. The next morning, they get up perhaps at daylight, for the sake of the coolness of the hour, and pass through the sieve ten or fifteen buckets before breakfast. After breakfast, all hands resume work till about twelve o'clock, when they dine, then rest through the heat of the day till three o'clock, and go on again till dark. They usually divide the work as follows: one in the hole digs, fills the bucket with earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play: your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man, subjected to a thousand discomforts unknown in civilised life.

The quicksilver cradle is a more complicated and expensive machine, requiring six men instead of three to work it. It is understood, however, to save at least 20 per cent. of the metal, and indeed to be indispensable in some places in California, where the gold is in too fine particles to be detected by the common rocker. Quicksilver has so strong an affinity for gold, that the minutest particle of the latter having once touched, it is deprived of the possibility of escape; and when the process of washing has been completely gone through, the whole mass of gold particles will be found bound together by the quicksilver into a compact lump, in size and shape often resembling an egg. The gold is thus obtained in the form of an amalgam; but the quicksilver is easily evaporated, if its loss be of no consequence, or separated without loss by a more scientific process.

We have more than once used the word _prospecting_, which, we believe, is peculiar to this kind of mining. The deposits of gold are so capricious, that the adventurers, in order to lose as little time as possible in removing from place to place, detach one of their number on the hunt for a mine--and this is called prospecting. He sets out with a few provisions, a rifle, a pick and shovel, at all events, with a pan and large knife; and on reaching some hopeful-looking locality, he makes experiments on the soil by washing. The considerations that determine his calling the company to the spot are of course influenced by the circumstance of their having a common or a quicksilver cradle. He calculates the average value of the gold he finds in several panfuls of the soil at different depths; and he takes into account the distance it has to be carried for washing, the means of transit there exist, and how far off is the nearest store. The prospector, therefore, is a very important member of the concern, and in many cases the success of the adventure depends upon his experience and sagacity.

THE HISTORY OF JANE A POOLE.

In the latter part of the fourteenth century, an incident occurred in the family of the Earl of Suffolk, which affords a curious illustration of old manners in England. We shall follow the account of the circumstance, given in a manuscript in the British Museum.

Sir Michel Poole, second Earl of Suffolk, had several sons and daughters. First was Mighell, son and heir; then William, second son; and afterwards ten additional olive branches, of diverse names and both sexes--all of whom, however, died, and went down unmarried to the cold tomb. Some fell off like nipped blossoms in their infancy; convents and wars absorbed the rest, till only the eldest two were left of all that numerous family to perpetuate the name of Poole, and raise the fortunes of the race. In due course of time, Sir Mighell married Elizabeth, daughter of the right noble knight, Thomas Duke of Norfolk; and these together had two children, Jane and Katharine, but, alas! no son. Years passed on, and the hope of an heir was at an end; but before that hope was quite laid aside, the tragedy of the house began.

Jane, as yet heiress and darling, a round, bright, wilful cherub, beautiful and loving, but mighty in her passionate force, and indomitable in her infant will, beyond all power of control--the one most cared for, and on whom was anchored such a rich argosy of hopes and first fond love--was one day given into the safe keeping of Maud, a young serving-girl, a rough, untutored peasant-girl, who was one of the underwomen to the bower-maidens. The king was coming to the castle that night, and every female finger that could work was employed on the last stitches of a dainty tapestry-bed, which was to receive His Majesty as became his lordly dignity. Even the mother's care must give way to the housewife's duty; even love must yield to loyalty.

Left alone in an upper apartment with her young charge, Maud became weary of confinement, and resolved at all hazards to descend to the great hall, and have her share of the general amusement. Down, accordingly, she went. Jane, of course, accompanied her, and, contrary to orders, was allowed to romp about at pleasure. The day was cold, and the fire burned brightly in the open hearth. Nearer and nearer the little one crept to the blazing logs, watching the sparks fly up in a golden shower when the crackling masses fell to the ground, or when some rough soldier struck them with his mailed hand. No one looked to her while she played by the open hearth, and tried to seize the vivid sparks; once only, a trooper caught her roughly back; but again she stole towards the great blazing logs, and this time she was less fortunate. Suddenly, a cry was heard. Jane's clothes were in flames. Maud extinguished them as she best could. She crushed the burning with her hands in such haste as she might make; but, alas! to what a wreck had the fire reduced the child! Her long fair hair was withered to its roots; her pretty eyes were closed, and the curling lashes scorched to the skin; her pure neck was blackened and blistered; and, a mass of pain and sore, she lay like a dead thing, but for the wailing moans which shewed her sad title yet to a ruined existence. Alas for her that she did not die! Wo, that life was so strong in her now, when, blemished and disfigured for ever, she might not hold its honours or taste its joys!--now, when she must endure a worse thing than death for the sake of her family name! 'Therefore,' says the chronicle, 'she was in a manner loathed of her parents, and kept forth secretly from the common knowledge of the people.'

'The house of Poole must have no charred mummy for its heiress,' said old Dame Katharine; and Sir Mighell and his lady bowed their heads and acquiesced.

It was agreed, then, that she should be sent to a house of 'close nuns,' to be made a woman of religion, and so kept out of the sight of all men's eyes. With this view, she was brought up; taught nothing else; suffered to hope for nothing else; suffered to speak of nothing else. But they could not bind her thoughts; and by a strange perversity of will, these went always to the open fields and the unfettered limb, to the vague picturing of freedom, and the dreamy forecast of love. Yet she kept her peace; not daring to tell her mind to any, and nourishing all the more strongly, because in silence, the characteristics which destroyed the charm of a conventual life. When she came to the years of discretion, she was to be professed; but, in accordance with an old custom, before her profession she required to enter the world for a season, that her 'vocation' might be judged of, whether it were true or not, or simply the effect of education on the one hand, and of ignorance on the other; and thus, when she was fifteen years of age, she was dismissed to her father's house for the space of six months' nominal trial, after which time she must return to the convent for ever.

Now, Dame Katharine a Poole, Jane's paternal grandmother, was a fierce, proud old woman, whose heart was set on the creation of her son's house, and whose very virtue was her family pride. When she heard of Jane's return to the outer world of men, she hastily rode over to see this ugly, despised thing, and to take her from her father's castle to the grim quiet of her own dungeon-like home, if so be that she was as unlovely as report had spoken her. They met; and for a moment the proud old dame was struck as by death. The seamed and scarred face, the closed eyes--one perfectly sightless, the other well-nigh so--the burnt and withered hair growing in long, ragged patches only, the awkward gait and downcast look; all were like daggers in Dame Katharine's heart; and 'she rebuked her greatly, seeing that she was too loathly for any gentleman who was equal to her in birth.'

Poor Jane bore all these coarse reproaches with much outward meekness; but the spirit which they woke up in her was little interpreted by the drooping head and tearful eyes. A fiery demon, breathing rage and vowing revenge, took such meek-seeming as this, and blinded the old grandam to the mischief she was working, until it was too late to repair it. Dame Katharine took the girl home; Sir Mighell and his wife consenting in gratitude to be so well delivered from such a heavy burden. Dame Elizabeth, the girl's mother, truly shed a few tears, quickly dried; and so young Jane parted for ever from her father's house.

Like a dead thing, revived by the fresh winds of heaven, Jane's comparative freedom aroused in her the most passionate abhorrence of the life to which she was destined, and the most passionate desire for liberty and affection. With each breath she drew by the open casement, with each glance cast into the depths of the dark woods beyond, rose up the strong instincts of her age, and turned her for ever from the convent gate. In vain the dame insisted; Jane stood firm; and declared that she would still refuse, at the very altar, to take the vow. Yet was she timid in all things but those of love and liberty; and Dame Katharine, by violence and threats, so worked on her fears, that she at last consented, amid grievous tears and bitter reproaches, to be deprived of her name and state, and given forth to the castle people as a poor gentlewoman, godchild to the dame.

'Anything for freedom!' sighed Jane, as she took the oath of secrecy. 'Any deprivation rather than that living tomb of the nun!'

It was now the dame's chief care to be rid of her charge. She cast about for suitors, but even the lowest squire shook his head at the offer. At last, she married her grandchild to the son of an honest yeoman of Suffolk, and so sent her forth to take her place in the world as the wife of a common peasant, and the mother of a family of peasants. Such was the fate allotted to Jane a Poole, daughter of the proud Earl of Suffolk!

Of her issue, we need say but little. Suffice it to know, that Jane and her ploughman William had four children, three sons and one daughter; of whom William, the second son, married an honest man's daughter, whose name was Alice Gryse, and whose children were living in 1490, when this chronicle was written.

Return we now to the puissant lord, Sir Mighell, Earl of Suffolk. He was not long suffered to enjoy his home; indeed, so ardent a soul as his would have eaten its way through his castle walls, as a chrysalis through its silken tomb, if he had been long inactive. If war had not been his duty, he must have made it his crime; if foreign foes had not called upon his valour, too surely would domestic friends have suffered from his disloyalty. Born for the fight, he would have fulfilled his destiny by force if he might not by right. At the battle of Agincourt (1415), he perished along with many other of England's nobles.

Sir Mighell having died without a son, his titles and estates went to his brother, Sir William. Dame Elizabeth, widow of Sir Mighell, and her daughter Katharine, shortly afterwards, as was usual in these times, went to reside in the Abbey of Brasenode; and there they ultimately died.

Meanwhile, and for years afterwards, no one knew anything of Jane, who, though exiled from her rank and family, perhaps enjoyed more real happiness than those who had been guilty of her maltreatment. At length, her husband died, which was a source of grief. Honest William had thought her queer in manners; but he loved her for all that, and was proud of her, as the daughter of a poor gentleman. He blessed her on his death-bed; and she remained a widow for his sake. Many yeomen wished to marry her, but she refused them all. This went on for many years--long after Sir William a Poole had become fourth Earl of Suffolk, and had had children born to him; long after Alice Gryse had become Jane's daughter-in-law, and made her more than once a grandmother too; and then the whole of this strange story became known. Jane had kept her vow of secrecy with perfect fidelity; never had she breathed a syllable to her husband or children as to the family to which she belonged. It was only, late in life, through confession she made to a priest, that who and what she had been was revealed. Shocked with the depravity of her unnatural parents, this pious and learned doctor, says the chronicle, 'commanded her to publish this account to her children and their issues, that they might know of what race they came, if so be, by the great mercy of Providence, they might claim their own again. And not only to them, but also to make it known to all men, as far as was consistent with her own safety; for he said, that the great power of Almighty God should be published to all the world. For this reason was the chronicle written--that all men might take warning; for no deed of wickedness is done in the dark, which shall not be dragged forth to the light; and no oppression on the innocent shall prosper before the right hand of Eternal Justice.'

THINGS TALKED OF IN LONDON.

_March 1852._

The lecture experiment at the Museum of Practical Geology, in Jermyn Street, has proved eminently successful. There were a thousand more applications for tickets than could be supplied, in consequence of which the executive very wisely determined, that the course should be repeated until the demand was satisfied. This fact of numbers speaks highly in favour of the working-men of London--none others are admitted to the course here referred to; and once having got the knowledge, it is to be hoped they will be able to turn it to good account. One of the lecturers told me, that the hall is always crowded, and that a better-behaved auditory has seldom been seen in any quarter, which we may consider to be an encouraging sign of the times. The other courses are also going on for those who are able to pay high fees, and attend during the day. The titles of a few of the lectures will give you an idea of the nature of the instruction offered; namely--The Relations of Natural History to Geology and the Arts; On the Value of an Extended Knowledge of Mineralogy and the Processes of Mining; On the Science of Geology and its Applications; On the Importance of Special Scientific Knowledge to the Practical Metallurgist; and On the Importance of Cultivating Habits of Observation. You must remember, that the institution is a government school of mines as well as a museum of geology.

In connection with this, it may be mentioned that the Society of Arts are discussing a project for the 'affiliation' of all the literary, philosophical, scientific, and mechanics' institutions throughout the kingdom, with a view to render them less languid and more beneficial than too many of them now are. Unity of purpose effected wonders with the Great Exhibition; and it is thought that the same cause should produce a similar result in the educational and recreative establishments alluded to. There is a talk, also, of an assembling of most of the learned societies of our great city under one roof--a sort of Palace of Science, which has long been wanting in London, but which has long existed in Paris. Should this scheme be carried out, the philosophers might then adopt Brother Jonathan's motto--_E pluribus unum_. And, next, the Suburban Artisan School of Drawing and Modelling, established last year at Camden-Town, has succeeded so well that the committee, with Prince Albert as patron, have determined to establish four additional schools in our other suburban districts. These schools are to be open every evening for instruction, at a charge per month of 2s. No working-man in the metropolis after this need be ignorant of drawing. Then, again, a 'Department of Practical Art' is organised in connection with the Board of Trade, which, by means of travelling and stationary superintendents, and other officers, is to assist in the development of artistic talent, and its application to useful purposes, wherever it may be found.

Co-operation of some sort or other is the order of the day; and now a good deal of attention is excited by the announcement of an 'Athenæum Institute for Authors and Artists,' something different from the Guild of Literature and Art set afoot last winter, the object being to endeavour to form an incorporated association of the two classes mentioned--of course for their common benefit. The aid of the possessors of rank and wealth is to be asked at starting, because, as the promoters say, 'we think literature has a right to ask the assistance of these other two great powers of society, because it so materially assists them; and because, in many of its branches, it has no other mode of being paid by society. The severely scientific, the highly imaginative, the profoundly legislative authors, do not produce promptly marketable, though they produce priceless, works. La Place, Wordsworth, Bentham, could not have existed had they depended on the first product of their works; they would have perished before an acknowledging world could have given them bread.' They say, further, that 'the humblest literary man works for something more than hire, and produces something more effective than a mere piece of merchandise. His book is not only sold to the profit of the bookseller, but to the benefit of the public. The publisher pays for its mercantile value, but the public should reward the author for its moral and social effect, as they take upon themselves to punish, if it have an evil tendency.'

Whether the promoters are right or wrong in their views, will be best proved by the result; meantime, they put forth some good names as provisional president, vice-president, and managers, and propose that the Institute shall comprise four branches--namely, a Protective Society, a Philanthropic and Provident Fund, an Educational Association, and a Life-Assurance Department. The subscribers are to consist of two classes: those who give contributions for the benefit of the Institute, and those who seek to benefit themselves. The former are to be asked to insure their lives, for different rates of premium, the amounts to fall into the corporation at the decease of the subscribers; and thus a fund would be raised out of which, on certain conditions, participating subscribers would be able to secure a provision for old age, or premature decay of mental power, the means of educating their children, and leaving a _solatium_ to their widows. If all this can be carried out, and if literary men, as a class, are capable of all that the prospectus of the new scheme implies, how much of distress and heart-breaking misery will be saved to society!

There are several subjects which, having recently been brought before our Horticultural Society, have somewhat interested gardening folk. At one of the meetings, there was exhibited 'a very fine specimen of common mignonette,' which 'was stated to have been a single plant pricked out into a pot in January 1851, and shifted on until it had attained a large size. It was mentioned, that mignonette is not an annual, as many imagine it to be; but that it will become a woody shrub, and last for years, provided it is well managed, and kept free from frost and damp.' So runs the report in the society's journal.

There was, likewise, an exhibition of black Hamburg grapes by Mr Fry, a Kentish gardener, who made thereupon some observations, which appear to be deserving of wider circulation. The grapes were grown in a building seldom heated artificially, and were much attacked by mildew during the last two seasons, on which prompt measures were taken to diffuse perfectly dry 'sulphur vivum' throughout the house by means of a sulphurator, until fruit and foliage were completely but lightly coated. 'Fires were lighted, and the temperature kept up to from 80 to 90 degrees, ventilation being considerably diminished, and water in any form discontinued. After being subject to this treatment for about four or five days, the vines received a thorough syringing, which cleansed them from every particle of sulphur. With respect to the use of sulphur in killing mildew, many ladies and gentlemen,' adds Mr Fry, 'with whom I have conversed, consider it highly objectionable: they say, that they do not like the idea of eating sulphur with grapes; neither would any one, and I can prove to them that this need never be done; and, moreover, that the use of sulphur, when timely and judiciously applied, does not in any way deteriorate the fruit. I much question if the most practised eye could detect sulphur on the grapes exhibited, although they have been twice covered with it; and as to the mildew itself among vines, I fear it no more than I do green-fly among cucumbers, which is so soon deprived of existence by the fumes of tobacco.'