Chapter I: Front Matter

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 10.] SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

A POPULAR DELUSION.

Victimised by a deceptive idea originating in ‘The Complete Angler,’ and which has been industriously perpetuated by a numerous proprietary of punts and houses of public entertainment and eel pies—the London disciples of Izaak Walton usually seek for sport in the upper regions of the Thames. They resort to Shepperton, or Ditton, or Twickenham, or Richmond. Chiefly, it would seem, as a wholesome exercise of the greatest Christian virtue, patience; for recent experience proves that anglers who soar above sticklebats, and are not content with occasional nibbles from starving gudgeons, or the frequent entanglements of writhing eels, mostly return to their homes and families with their baskets innocent of the vestige of a single scale.

If—as may be safely asserted—the aim, end, and purpose of all fishing is fish, the tenacity with which this idea is clung to, is astonishing; we may indeed say, amazing when we reflect that there exists—-below bridge—a particular spot, more convenient, more accessible, and affording quite as good accommodation as any of the above-bridge fishing stations, and which abounds at particular states of the tide, at particular times of the day, and at no particular seasons of the year, but all the year round, in fish of every sort, size, species, and condition, from the cod down to the sprat; from a salmon to a shrimp; from turbots to Thames flounders. Neither is there a single member of any one of these enormous families of fishes that may not be captured with the smallest possible expenditure of patience. And although the bait necessary for that purpose (a white bait manufactured of metal at an establishment on that bank of the Thames known as Tower Hill,) is unfortunately not always procurable by every class of her Majesty’s subjects; yet it is so eagerly caught at, that, with a moderate supply, the least expert may be sure of filling his fish-basket very respectably.

In order to partake of all the advantages offered by this famed spot, it is necessary to rise betimes. The fishing excursion of which we are now about to give a sketch, commenced at about four o’clock on a Monday morning. The rain which fell at the time did not much matter, on account of the sheltered position of that margin of the Thames to which we were bound. With a small basket, and the waistcoat pocket primed with a little of the proper sort of bait; with no other rod than a walking stick, and no fly whatever, (except one upon four wheels procured from a neighbouring cab stand,) we arrived at the great fish focus; which, we may as well mention, to relieve suspense, is situated on the Middlesex shore of the Thames at a short distance below London Bridge, close to the Custom House, opposite the Coal Exchange, and has been known from time immemorial as BILLINGSGATE.

When we arrived at the collection of sheds and stalls—like a dilapidated railway station—of which this celebrated place consists, it was nearly five o’clock. Its ancient reputation had prepared us for scenes of confusion and for volubility of abuse, which have since the times of the Tritons ever been associated with those whose special business is with fish. It was, therefore, with very great surprise that we walked unmolested through that portion of the precinct set aside as the market. We went straight to the river’s edge, rod in hand, without having had once occasion to use it as a weapon, and without hearing one word that might not have been uttered in the Queen’s drawing-room on a court day. No crowding, no elbowing, no screaming, no fighting: no ungenteel nick-names, no foul-mouthed females hurling anathemas at their neighbours’ optics; no rude requests to despatch ourself suddenly down to the uttermost depth the human mind is capable of conceiving; no wish expressed that we might be inflated very tight indeed; no criticisms on the quality of our hat; no impertinent questions as to our present stock of soap; nothing whatever, in short, calculated to sustain the ancient reputation of Billingsgate.

With easy deliberation we sauntered down to the dumb-barge which forms a temporary landing-place while a better one is being built. There we beheld a couple of clippers, quite as trim as any revenue-cutter; over the sides of which were being handed all sorts of fish; cod, soles, whitings, plaice, John Dorys, mackerel; some neatly packed in baskets. That nothing should be wanting utterly to subvert established notions of Billingsgate, the order, quietness, and system with which these cutters were emptied, and their cargoes taken to the stalls, could not be exceeded.

This office is performed by fellowship-porters. Being responsible individuals, they prevent fraud. Formerly a set of scamps, called laggers, ‘conveyed’ the fish; but they used to drop some of the best sort softly into the stream, and pick them up at low water. An idea may be formed of the profits of their dishonesty, from the fact that laggers offered seven shillings a day to be employed, instead of demanding the wages of labour. When a salesman had one or two hundred turbots consigned to him, a lagger would give the hint to an accomplice, who would quickly substitute several small fish for the same number of the largest size; a species of fraud which the salesman had it not in his power to detect, as the tally was not deficient.

At that time an immense number of bad fish was condemned every morning by the superintendent. There was an understanding between the consignees and salesmen that when the market was well supplied, any overplus should be kept back in store boats at Gravesend, and not brought to market till the supply was diminished, and the price raised. This dishonest mode of ‘regulating’ the market caused a great many stale fish to be brought to it; hence the quantity condemned. Now, however, the celerity with which fish can be conveyed prevents any such practice, and of late years the superintendent has only had occasion to condemn in rare instances.

Every possible expedient and appliance is now resorted to, to bring fish to market fresh. As we have a minute or two to wait on the Billingsgate punt before the market opens, let us trace the history of a fish from the sea to the salesman’s stall. Suppose him to be a turbot hauled with a hundred other captives early on Monday afternoon on board one of the Barking fishing fleet moored on a bank some twenty miles off Dover. He is no sooner taken on board than he is trans-shipped immediately with thousands of his flat companions in a row-boat into a clipper, which is being fast filled from other vessels of the fleet. When her cargo is complete, she sets sail for the mouth of the Thames, and on entering it is met by a tug steamer, which tows her up to Billingsgate early on Tuesday morning, bringing our turbot _alive_—for he has been put into a tank in the hold of the clipper. He is sold as soon as landed, and finds his way to table in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House or Belgrave Square some four-and-twenty hours after he has been sporting in the sea, not less than a hundred and fifty miles off.

Enormous accessions in the supply of fish to the London market have been effected, first by the employment of clippers as carrier-boats, (instead of each fishing-boat bringing its own cargo as formerly,) and secondly, by the use of steam-tugs for towing the transit-craft up the river. In the old time a south-westerly wind deprived all London of fish. While it prevailed the boats, which usually took shelter in Holy or East Haven on the Essex shore, waited for a change of wind, till the fish became odoriferous. The cargo was then thrown overboard, and the boats returned on another fishing voyage.

The Thames was, at that time, the only highway by which fish was brought to Billingsgate; but the old losses and delays are again obviated by another source of acceleration. Our turbot is brought at waggon pace compared with the more perishable mackerel. The Eddystone lighthouse is at least two hundred and fifty miles from Thames Street. Between it and the Plymouth Breakwater lie some hundreds of fishing boats, plying their trawl-nets. A shoal of mackerel, the superficies of which may be measured by the mile, find their way among them, and several thousands dart into the nets. They are captured, hauled on board, shovelled into a clipper, and while she stands briskly in for shore, busy hands on board are packing the fish in baskets. Thousands of these baskets are landed in time for the mail train, rattle their way per railroad to Paddington, and by seven o’clock on the following morning—that is, in sixteen hours after they were rejoicing in the ‘ocean wave’—are in a London fishmonger’s taxed-cart on their road to the gridiron or fish-kettle, as the taste of the customer dictates.

No distance appears too great from which to bring fish to Billingsgate. Packed in long boxes, both by rail and river, between layers of ice, salmon come daily in enormous quantities from the remotest rivers of Ireland, of Scotland, and even from Norway. So considerable an item is ice in the fishmonger’s trade, that a large proprietor at Barking has an ice-well capable of stowing eight hundred tons. Another in the same line of business has actually contracted with the Surrey Canal Company for all the ice generated on their waters!

As we cogitate concerning these ‘great facts’ on the dumb-barge, and while the baskets and boxes are being systematically landed, it strikes five. A bell—the only noisy appurtenance of Billingsgate—stunningly announces that the market is open. The landing of fish proceeds somewhat faster, and fishmongers, from all parts of London, and from many parts of the provinces—from Oxford, Cambridge, Reading, Windsor, &c.—group themselves round the stalls of such salesmen as appear to have the choicest fish. These are rapidly sold by (Dutch) auction; and taken to the buyers’ carts outside the market.

Nothing can exceed the gentlemanly manner in which the auction is conducted, except the mode of doing business at Christie and Manson’s. Before the commencement, the salesman, with his flannel apron protecting his almost fashionable attire from scaly contact, is seen—behold him yonder!—seated behind his stall enjoying a mild Havannah, with an appearance of sublime indifference to all around him. Presently, his porter deposits a ‘lot’ of fish between him, and an eager group of buyers. He puts down his cigar and mounts his rostrum.

“What shall we say, gentlemen, for this score of cod? Shall we say seven shillings a piece?”

No answer.

“Six?”

Perfect silence. The auctioneer gives pause for consideration, and takes a whiff at his Havannah. Time is, however, precious, where fish is concerned, and he is not long in abating another shilling.

“A crown?”

“Done!” exclaims Mr. Jollins of Pimlico.

“Five pounds, if you please!” demands the seller. A note is handed over, and the twenty cod are hoisted into Mr. Jollins’ cart, which stands in Thames Street, before a second lot is quite disposed of.

This mild proceeding is going on all over the market. On looking to see if the remotest relic of such a being as a fish-fag is to be seen, we observe a gentleman who, though girded with the flannel uniform of the craft, has so fashionable a surtout, so elegant a neckerchief, and such a luxuriance of moustache and whiskers, that we mistake him for an officer in her Majesty’s Life Guards, selling fish by way of—what in Billingsgate used to be called—a ‘jolly lark.’ Enquiry proves, however, that he is the accredited consignee of one of the largest fishing fleets which sail out of the Thames.

We are bound to confess that the high tone of refinement which had hitherto been so well supported on the occasion of our visit, became in a little while, slightly depressed. As the legislature of the British empire consists of Crown, Lords, and Commons; so also the executive of Billingsgate is composed of three estates: first, of the Lord Mayor (Piscine secretary of state, Mr. Goldham); secondly, of an aristocracy, and, thirdly, of a commonalty, of salesmen. The latter—called in ancient Billingsgate _Bummarees_, in modern ditto, ‘Retailers’—are middlemen between the smaller fishmonger and the high salesman aristocracy. They purchase the various sorts of fish, and arrange them in small assorted parcels to suit the convenience of suburban fishmongers, or of those peripatetic tradesmen, to whom was formerly applied the obsolete term almost of ‘Costermonger.’ The transactions between these parties were not conducted under the influence of those strict rules of etiquette which governed the earlier dealings of the morning. Indeed, we detected the proprietor of a very respectable looking donkey answering a civil enquiry from a retailer as to what he was ‘looking for’ with

“Not you!”

It is right, however, to add, in justice to the reputation of a locality which has been so long and so undeservedly regarded as the head quarters of verbal vulgarity, that a friend of the offender asked him solemnly _if he remembered were he wos_; and if he warn’t ashamed of his-self for going and bringing his Cheek into that ’ere markit?

Connected with the perambulating purveyors, there is a subject of very great importance; namely, cheap food for the poor. Although painful revelations of want of proper sustenance in every part of this overcrowded country, are daily breaking forth to light; although the low dietaries of most workhouses, and some prisons, are very often complained of; yet the old Celtic prejudice against fish still exists in great force among the humbler orders. Few poor persons will eat fish when they can get meat; many prefer gruel, and some slow starvation. Divers kinds of wholesome and nutritious fish are now sold at prices not above the means of the poorest persons; yet, so small is the demand, that the itinerant vendor—through whom what little that is sold reaches the humble consumer—makes it a matter of perfect indifference when he starts from home whether his venture for the day shall be fish or vegetables. His first visit is to Billingsgate; but if he find things, as regards price or kind, not to his taste, he adjourns to speculate in Covent Garden. He has, therefore, no regular market for what might most beneficially become a staple article. During the fruit season, little or no fish reaches the humbler classes; because then their purveyors find dealings with the ‘Garden’ more profitable than dealings at the ‘Gate.’

Not long since a large quantity of wholesome fish of various sorts was left upon the hands of the market superintendent. By the advice of the Lord Mayor, it was forwarded for consumption to Giltspur Street Compter. The prisoners actually refused to eat it, and accompanied their refusal with a jocose allusion to the want of a proper accompaniment of sauce.

Among the stronger instances of the popular aversion to this kind of food, we may mention that in 1812, one of the members of the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor, agreed with some fishermen to take from ten to twenty thousand mackerel a day, at a penny a piece; a price at which the fishermen said they could afford to supply the London market, to any extent, were they sure of a regular sale. On the 15th June, 1812, upwards of seventeen thousand mackerel, delivered at the stipulated price, were sent to Spitalfields, and sold to the working weavers at the original cost of a penny a piece. Though purchased with great avidity by the inhabitants of that district, it soon appeared that Spitalfields alone would not be equal to the consumption of the vast quantities of mackerel which daily poured into the market; they were, therefore, sent for distribution at the same rate, in other parts of the town; workhouses and other public establishments were also served, and the supply increased to such a degree, that five hundred thousand mackerel arrived and were sold in one day.

This cheap and benevolent supply was eagerly absorbed while the distress lasted; but as soon as trade revived, the demand fell off and finally ceased altogether.

Is this aversion to fish unconquerable? If it be not, what an enormous augmentation of wholesome food might be procured to relieve the increasing wants of the humble and needy. All the time the above experiment was tried, only a small portion of the coast was available for the supply of the densest inland populations of this island. Now, there is scarcely a creek or an estuary from which fish cannot be rapidly transported, however great the distance.

Compared with the boundless means of supply, and the lightning-like powers of transit, the price of fish is at present inordinately dear. But this is solely the fault of the public. The demand is too inconsiderable to call forth any great and, therefore, economical system. The voyager, per steam, between the Thames and Scotland, or between London and Cork, cannot fail to wonder when he sees, as he surely will see on a warm, calm day, _scores of square miles_ of haddocks, mackerel, pilchards, herrings, &c.; when he has left on shore thousands of human beings pining for food. These enormous shoals approach the land, too, on purpose to be caught. In the History of British Fishes, Mr. Yarrell says, ‘The law of Nature which obliges mackerel and many others to visit the shallower water of the shores at a particular season, appears to be one of those wise and beautiful provisions of the Creator by which not only is the species perpetuated with the greatest certainty, but a large portion of the parent animals are thus brought within the reach of man, who, but for the action of this law, would be deprived of many of those species most valuable to him as food. For the mackerel dispersed over the immense surface of the deep, no effective fishery could be carried on; but approaching the shore as they do from all directions, and roving along the coast collected in immense shoals, millions are caught, which yet form but a very small portion compared with the myriads that escape.’ The fecundity of some of the species is marvellous. It has been ascertained by actual experiment, that the roe of the cod fish contains from six to nine millions of eggs.

Nor are river fish less abundant. Mr. Yarrell says, that two persons once calculated from actual observation, that from sixteen to eighteen hundred of the delicate ingredients for Twickenham pies passed a given point on the Thames in one minute of time; an average of more than one hundred thousand per hour. And this _eel-fare_, as it is called, is going on incessantly for more than two months. The king of fish is equally prolific, and quite as easily captured. The choicest salmon that appear in Billingsgate are from the river Bann, near Coleraine. We found it eighteen pence per pound; yet it is recorded that fourteen hundred and fifty salmon were taken in that river at one drag of a single net!

The appetite for fish is, it would seem, an acquired taste; but it would be of enormous advantage if any means could be devised for encouraging the consumption of this description of food. In order to commence the experiment we would suggest the regular introduction of fish into workhouse and prison dietaries. Formerly, such a measure was not practicable during the whole of the year, but, with a trifling outlay, such a system of supply might be organised as would ensure freshness and constancy.

The proprietor of the handsome donkey, who led us into this statistical reverie, informed us—and he was corroborated by his friend—that the only certainty was the red-herring and periwinkle trade; but then the competition was so werry great. “_I_ don’t know how it is,” he observed, “but people’ll buy salt things with all the wirtue dried out on ’em, but——”

“That’s because they has a relish,” interrupted the Mentor.

“But fresh fish,” renewed the other gentleman, with a glance of displeasure at being interrupted; “fresh fish—all alive, as we cries ’em—fresh fish, mind you!—they can’t abear!”

We also learnt from these gentlemen that the professors of the Hebrew faith were the only constant fish-eaters.

“And wy?” continued the councillor, “cos when they eats fish, they thinks they’re a fasting!”

This reminding us that we were actually fasting, we complimented our friend on his donkey (which he assured us was a ‘Moke’ of the reg’lar Tantivy breed), and having completed the filling of our basket, were about to return home to breakfast, with an excellent appetite, and a high respect for the manners of modern fishmongers, when he hailed us easily with, “Halloa, you Sir!”

We went back.

“I tell you wot,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the Market Tavern,—“but p’raps you have though.”

“Have what?” said we.

“Dined at Simpson’s, the Fish Hord’n’ry,” said he.

“Never,” said we.

“Do it!” said he. “You go and have a tuck-out at Simpson’s at four o’clock in the arternoon (wen me and my old ooman is a going to take our tea, with a winkle or wot not) and you’ll come out as bright as a star, and as sleek as this here Moke.”

We thanked him for his hint towards the improvement of our personal appearance, which was a little dilapidated at that hour of the morning, and were so much impressed by the possibility of rivalling the Moke, that we returned at four o’clock in the afternoon, and climbed up to the first floor of Mr. Simpson’s house.

A glance at the clock assured us that Mr. Simpson was a genius. He kept it back ten minutes, to give stragglers a last chance. Already, the long table down the whole length of the long low room was nearly full, and people were sitting at a side table, looking out through windows, like stern-windows aboard ship, at flapping sails, and rigging. The host was in the chair, with a wooden hammer ready to his hand; and five several gentlemen, much excited by hunger and haste, who had run us down on the stairs, had leaped into seats, and were menacing expected turbots with their knives.

We slipped into a vacant chair by a gentleman from the Eastern Counties, who immediately informed us that Sir Robert Peel was all wrong, and the agricultural interest blown to shivers. This gentleman had little pieces of sticking-plaster stuck all over him, and we thought his discontent had broken out in an eruption, until he informed us that he had been ‘going it, all last week’ with some ruined friends of his who were also in town, and that ‘champagne and claret always had that effect upon him.’

On our left hand, was an undertaker from Whitechapel. “Here’s a bill,” says he; “this General Interment! What’s to become of my old hands who haven’t been what you may call rightly sober these twenty years? Ain’t there _any_ religious feeling in the country?”

The company had come, like the fish, from various distances. There was a respectable Jew provision-merchant from Hamburg, over the way. Next him, an old man with sunken jaws that were always in motion, like a gutta percha mouth that was being continually squeezed. He had come from York. Hard by, a very large smooth-faced old gentleman in an immense ribbed satin waistcoat, out of Devonshire, attended by a pink nephew who was walking the London Hospitals. Lower down, was a wooden leg that had brought the person it belonged to, all the way from Canada. Two ‘parties,’ as the waiter called them, who had been with a tasting-order to the Docks, and were a little scared about the eyes, belonged to Doncaster. Pints of stout and porter were handed round, agreeably to their respective orders. Everybody took his own pint pot to himself, and seemed suspicious of his neighbour. As the minute hand of the clock approached a quarter past four, the gentleman from the Eastern Counties whispered us, that if the country held out for another year, it was as much as he expected.

Suddenly a fine salmon sparkled and twinkled like a silver harlequin before Mr. Simpson. A goodly dish of soles was set on lower down; then, in quick succession, appeared flounders, fried eels, stewed eels, cod fish, melted butter, lobster-sauce, potatoes. Savoury steams curled and curled about the company’s heads, and toyed with the company’s noses. Mr. Simpson hammered on the table. Grace!

For one silent moment, Mr. Simpson gazed upon the salmon as if he were the salmon’s admiring father, and then fell upon him, and helped twenty people without winking. Five or six flushed waiters hurried to and fro, and played cymbals with the plates; the company rattled an accompaniment of knives and forks; the fish were no more, in a twinkling. Boiled beef, mutton, and a huge dish of steaks, were soon disposed of in like manner. Small glasses of brandy round, were gone, ere one could say it lightened. Cheese melted away. Crusts dissolved into air. Mr. Simpson was gay. He knew the worst the company could do. He saw it done, twice every day. Again he hammered on the table. Grace!

Then, the cloth, the plates, the salt-cellars, the knives and forks, the glasses and pewter-pots, being all that the guests had not eaten or drunk, were cleared; bunches of pipes were laid upon the table; and everybody ordered what he liked to drink, or went his way. Mr. Simpson’s punch, in wicked tumblers of immense dimensions, was the most in favour. Mr. Simpson himself consorted with a company of generous spirits—connected with a Brewery, perhaps—and smoked a mild cigar. The large gentleman out of Devonshire: so large now, that he was obliged to move his chair back, to give his satin waistcoat play: ordered a small pint bottle of port, passed it to the pink nephew, and disparaged punch. The nephew dutifully concurred, but looked at the undertaker’s glass, out of the corner of his eye, as if he could have reconciled himself to punch, too, under pressure, on a desart island. The ‘parties’ from the Docks took rum-and-water, and wandered in their conversation. He of the Eastern Counties took cold gin-and-water for a change, and for the purification of his blood. Deep in the oiled depths of the old-fashioned table, a reflection of every man’s face appeared below him, beaming. Many pipes were lighted, the windows were opened at top, and a fragrant cloud enwrapped the company, as if they were all being carried upward together. The undertaker laughed monstrously at a joke, and the agriculturist thought the country might go on, say ten years, with good luck.

Eighteen pence a-head had done it all—the drink, and smoke, and civil attendance excepted—and again this was Billingsgate! Verily, there is ‘an ancient and fish-like smell’ about our popular opinions sometimes; and our hereditary exaltations and depressions of some things would bear revision!

GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.

In England everybody notices the weather, and talks about the weather, and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us _know_ anything about it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an insatiable national disease—consumption; the density of our winter fog has gained an European celebrity; whilst the general haziness of the atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are ever indulged with a real blue sky. ‘Good day’ has become the national salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes and cough mixtures are almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which regulate its course and variations.

Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope established that a continuance of patient enquiry will be rewarded by still further discoveries. To take a single result it may be mentioned, that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as certainly as a well aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate or deficient food and shelter has weathered them for the final stroke, but they actually die at last of the weather.

Before 1838 several European states less apt than ourselves to talk about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the Admiralty under the title of the ‘Board of Visitors,’ to see what is in progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials ‘listened and believed.’

The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory walls in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterwards a few low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the enclosure. These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet they contain some most beautifully constructed instruments, and have been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some 80 feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lanthorn at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer he perceives a small inner enclosure surrounded by a dwarf fence, an upright stand with a moveable top sheltering a collection of thermometers, and here and there a pile of planks and unused partitioning that helps to give the place an appearance of temporary expediency—an aspect something between a collection of emigrant’s cottages and the yard of a dealer in second-hand building materials. But,—as was said when speaking of the Astronomical Observatory,—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses during the last ten years Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are curious in the extreme: but before we ask what they are, let us cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.

The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood; all iron and other metals being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the fourth arm is a sort of double window filled with apparatus for receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands close by. Thus in this wooden shed we find one portion devoted to electricity—to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the atmosphere—and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the condition of the air. ‘True as the needle to the pole,’ is the burden of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin’s sea-heroes whose constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to the north.

Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which supports it. Another light for the purpose of collecting the electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in the neighbourhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lanthorn to those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. ‘Then, surely,’ says another popular legend, ‘it is to guide the ships on the river, when on their way up at night;—a sort of land-mark to tell whereabouts the Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show where their watchers are.’

All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater force, whilst neighbouring instruments measure the length of the electric sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by, sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple in colour. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.

Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair’s breadth. One magnet hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully, that when once adjusted and enclosed in its case, it is opened only once a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in spinning their fine threads amongst his machines. Indeed, spiders occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behaviour. At times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian fire-worshipper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but always gazing through the sun’s rays up towards that luminary. He seems demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down. In truth his eye had at last caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line running from the electrical wire to the neighbouring planks. The spider who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and registered, by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding delicacy of the observations.

For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly watched every two hours—every even hour—day and night, except on Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws regulating the movements of the mariner’s compass; hence, that whilst men became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief observer—the _genius loci_—is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the reports of the Registrar-General. He, with two assistants, from year to year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing the tasks before performed by human labour; and doing them more faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a single ray of prepared light which, falling upon a mirror soldered to the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed towards a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet’s slightest motion! The paper moves on by clockwork, and once in four-and-twenty hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a lanthorn of _yellow glass_, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it securely in, winds up the clockwork, puts out his yellow light and lets in the sunshine. His lanthorn glass is yellow, because the yellow rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish in which its magnetic picture is to be _fixed_ by a further chemical process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic likeness;—as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.

Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr. Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.

The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the south-west contains a modification of Mr. Brooke’s ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus:—‘To Mr. Charles Brooke for his invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena, 500_l._’ Every year the invention will save fully 500_l._ worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.

Photography, however, cannot do all the work. Its records have to be checked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general value, but now by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values, and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House, but they were a dead letter—mere long columns of figures—till these tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers, who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities, which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.

What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already, the results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed. Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point, and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the last seventy-nine years—from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality, popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm years are tinted brown, and the cold years grey, and as the sheets are turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggests itself that a grey period saw Lord George Gordon’s riots; a grey period was marked by the Reform Bill excitement; and a grey period saw the Corn Laws repealed.

A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers, and we have done.

Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average temperature—nor too hot nor too cold.

The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and, consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.

The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the utmost consequence.

Some day near the 20th of January—the lucky guess in 1838 of Murphy’s Weather Almanac—will, upon the average of years, be found to be the coldest of the whole year.

In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and various authors have tried to account for it,—at present in vain. The favourite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold to the loosening of the icebergs of the North. Another weather eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of November.

Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the temperature of the Thames and of the surrounding atmosphere are expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.

If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with, and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.

Amongst other experiments going on some time ago in the Observatory enclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much warmth the Earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture the Air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long grass within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of odd substances in little distinct quantities. Ashes, wood, leather, linen, cotton, glass, lead, copper, and stone, amongst other things, were there to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon a post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as punctually was this fluid re-measured to see what had been lost by evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on, and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of the magnet-house, and looking towards the stand, the mystery was revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a bath by an irreverent bird!—a sparrow was scattering from his wings the water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that had taken three years to compile. The labour was lost—the work had to be begun again.

MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.