Chapter III: Part 3

On arriving at the church about half-past seven we were met by friends of the bridegroom, who stood at one end of the church, surrounded by his family, and every now and then casting anxious and tender looks at the beloved one, who was again howling and sobbing like a mad woman. I thought how painful it must be for him, poor man, to witness such distress, and wondered why she should marry any one for whom she manifested so much dislike. After administering restoratives, she became calmer, and the priests appeared—when off she went again into a fit of hysterics more sudden, though not so violent as her previous performances; but, this time, was soon restored, and the ceremony commenced.

One priest stood at the altar, and two others at a kind of table or reading-desk at some distance. The un-happy couple were placed beside each other, behind the priests, who commenced chaunting the service in beautiful style. The bride and bridegroom held each a lighted wax taper in their hand; a little more chaunting, and rings were exchanged; more chaunting, and then a small piece of carpet was brought, upon which they both stood; two crowns were then presented to them, and after they had kissed the saint upon them, these were held over their heads by the bridesmen. More chaunting; then there was wine brought, which they were obliged to drink, first he and then she; they made three sups of it, though, at first, there appeared only about a wine-glassful; after this the Priest took hold of them and walked them round the church three times, the bridegroom’s man following holding the crowns over their heads to the best of his ability; but he fell short of his duty, for the bridegroom was rather tall and his man rather short: hence there was some difficulty and slight awkwardness in this part of the proceedings; then followed a kind of exhortation, delivered in a very impressive manner by the senior Priest. After this, they proceeded to the altar, prostrated themselves before it, kissing the ground with great apparent fervour; then all the saints on the wall were kissed, and lastly the whole of the party assembled. We then adjourned to the carriages, and after a quick ride soon found ourselves at home.

Here Monsieur and Madame A. performed the part of _Père et Mère_, met the bridal party, carrying the black bread and salt which is always given on such occasions. This was, with some words—a blessing, of course—waved over the heads of the newly married couple, who were on their knees kissing most vehemently the feet of their _Père et Mère_. After this ceremony, which means “May you never want the good here offered you,” they arose, and again the kissing mania came upon the whole party with greater vehemence than ever. Nothing was heard for some time but the sound of lips; at length a calm came, and with it champagne, in which every one of them drank “Long life and happiness to the newly-wed pair,” all striking their glasses till I thought there would be a universal smash, so violently were they carried away by their enthusiasm; then came chocolate, and lastly fruit.

As soon as the feasting was over, the dancing commenced with a Polonaise; the steward, a great man in the house, leading off the bride, who by this time had forgotten all her sorrows. About twenty couple followed, and away they went, through one room, out at another, until they had made the whole circuit of the apartments.

We left them at half-past eleven, but they kept up the fun till five in the morning, when they conducted the happy pair to their dwelling.

Upon my expressing pity for the bride, and also my astonishment why she married a man who appeared so very repugnant to her, I learnt that she would not be considered either a good wife or a good woman unless she was led to the altar in a shower-bath of tears; in fact, in Russia, the more tears a woman sheds, the better her husband likes her!

A NEW JOINT-STOCK PANDEMONIUM COMPANY.

Gaming without risk, certainty in chance, Fortune showering her favours out of the dice-box, are promised by the promoters of a New Joint-Stock Company just set on foot in Paris, the prospectus of which now lies before us. This is nothing less than a society for the propagation of gambling in San Francisco; “capital, one hundred and fifty thousand francs, in three hundred shares of five hundred francs each, provisionally registered on May 10, 1850. Chief Office, No. 17, Rue Vivienne.”

The promoters of this precious CERCLE DE SAN FRANCISCO declare that certainty will be the issue of this notable scheme, the essence of which is hazard. “There never was,” they say, “an enterprise more sure of gain. Three years, with twelve dividends, paid once a quarter, will produce enormous results. These have been accurately tested by the most conscientious (?) calculations, based on the produce of the German gaming-houses, and we have ascertained that each share of five hundred francs will yield an annual dividend of three thousand francs over and above interest at six per cent!”

The future House itself is thus painted in bright perspective:—“A fine house of wood, of two stories, with a magnificent coffee-room on the ground floor; a vast saloon on the first-floor for two roulette-tables; on the second, apartments for the manager, the servants; and the officers; the whole completely furnished, with all necessary appurtenances for warming and lighting. Tables, implements, counters, iron coffers for the specie, &c., are to be immediately exported by a sailing vessel. M. Mauduit, the manager, will accompany these immense munitions, together with subordinates of known probity. M. Charles, chief-of-the-play at Aix, in Savoy, is to follow, as director of the expedition, at the end of October, by steamer. It is expected that preparations will be complete, so as to open the Cercle in San Francisco on the 31st December of this year.”

Of all the bare-faced schemes that was ever presented to a French public, this is surely the most extravagant. There is nothing in _Jerome Patûrot_ that equals it in impudence.

YOUTH AND SUMMER.

It is Summer. Day is now at its longest, the season at its brightest; and the heat comes down through the glowing heavens—broiling the sons of labour, but whitening the fields for the harvest. Like hapless Semele, consumed by the splendours of her divine lover, Earth seems about to perish beneath the ardent glances of the God of Day. The sun comes bowling from the Tropics to visit the Hyperboreans. The strange phenomenon of the Polar day—when for six months he keeps careering through the sky, without a single rising or setting, rolling like a fiery ball along the edge of the horizon, glittering like a thousand diamonds on the fields of ice—is now melting the snows that hide the lichens, the rein-deer’s food; and, quivering down through the azure shallows of the Greenland coast, infuses the fire of love and the lust for roaming into the “scaly myriads” of the herring tribe.

On ourselves, the Summer sun is shining, glowing—robing in gold the declining days of July, and taking her starry jewels from the crown of Night—nay, lifting the diadem from her sable brow, and invading the skies of midnight with his lingering beams. Oh, what a glory in those evening skies! The sun, just set, brings out the summits of the far-off hills sharp and black against his amber light: Nature is dreaming; yonder sea is calm as if it had never known a storm. It is the hour of Reverie: old memories, half-forgotten poetry, come floating like dreams into the soul. We wander in thought to the lonely Greek Isle, where Juan and Haidee are roaming with encircling arms upon the silvery sands, or gaze in love’s reverie from the deserted banquet-room upon the slumbering waters of the Ægean. We see the mariner resting on his oars within the shadow of Ætna, and hear the “Ave Sanctissima” rising in solemn cadence from the waveless sea. We stand beneath the lovely skies of Italy—we rest on the woody slopes of the Apennines, where the bell of some distant convent is proclaiming sundown, and the vesper hymn floats on the rosy stillness, a vocal prayer.

“Ave Maria! blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o’er the earth so beautiful and soft;
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft;
While not a breath stole through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem’d stirr’d with prayer!”

Study is impossible in the Summer evenings—those long, clear, mellow nights, when the Evening Star hangs like a diamond lamp in the amber skies of the West, and the hushed air seems waiting for serenades. The very charm of our Study is then our ruin. Whenever we lift our eyes from the page, we look clear away, as from a lofty turret, upon the ever-shifting glories of sunset, where far-off mountains form the magic horizon, and a wide arm of the sea sleeps calmly between, reflecting the skyey splendours. Our heart is not in our task. There is a vague yearning within us, for happiness more ethereal than any we have yet beheld, a happiness which the eye cannot figure, which only the soul can feel—it is the Spirit dreaming of its immortal home. Now and then we pause—the beauty without, half-unconsciously fixes upon itself our dreamy gaze.

“Oh, Summer night!
So soft and bright!”

That air, that lovely serenade of Donizetti’s, seems floating in the room. A sweet voice is singing it in my ear, in my heart. Ah, those old times! I think of the hour when first I heard that strain, and of the fair creature singing it—with the twilight shadows around us, and her lip, that might have tempted an Angel, curling, half-proudly, half-kindly, as “upon entreaty” she resumed the strain. I fall into deeper reverie as I recollect it all—those evenings of entrancement, those days of boyish pain and jealousy. And ever the melody comes floating in through my brain, yet without attracting my thoughts—a strain of sweetest sounds accompanying the dissolving views which are dreamily, perpetually, forming and changing, gathering and dispersing, before my mind’s eye, like the rose-clouds of sunset. Those shapes are too ethereal for the mind to grasp them. Is it a Juno-like form, beneath the skies and amid the flowers of Summer—with Zephyr playing among her golden curls, as she lifts from her neck a hair-chain to yield it to the suit of love! Or is it a zigzag path on a hill-side—a steed backing on a precipice—a lovely girl on the green bank, clinging to her preserver—sinking, swooning, quivering from that vision of sudden death! Who shall daguerreotype those airy shapes? We feel their presence rather than know their form, and the instant we try to see what we are seeing, they are gone!

We are no bad risers in the morning, but we never saw the sun rise on Midsummerday but once. It is many years ago, yet we remember it as vividly as if it had been this morning. It was from the summit of the Calton Hill, the unfinished Acropolis, the still-born ruin of Modern Athens. The whole sky in the south and west, opposite to where the sun was about to appear, was suffused from the horizon to the zenith with a deep pink or rose hue; and in the midst, spanning the heavens, stood a magnificent Rainbow! A symbol of peace in a sea of blood! There lay the palatial edifices of the New Town, white and still in the hush of early morning, and high above them and around them rose that strange emblem of mercy amid judgment. Such an apparition might fitly have filled the skies of the Cities of the Plain on that woeful morn, the last the blessed sun ever rose upon them;—ere amid mutterings in the earth and thunders in the clouds, the volcano awoke from its sleep, and the red lava poured from its sources of fire—when clouds of stones and ashes, falling, falling, falling, gathered deeper and deeper above the Plain, and the descending lightnings set fire to the thousand founts of naphtha bubbling up from their subterranean reservoirs—when a whirlwind of flame shot up against the face of the sky, like the last blasphemy of a godless world; and with a hollow groaning, the sinking, convulsed earth hid the scene of pollution and wrath beneath the ever mournful-looking waters of the Dead Sea. The skies of night and morning are familiar to me as those of day, but never but that once did that Heavenly Spectre meet my eye.

As I reached the northern brow of the hill, it wanted but a minute or two of sunrise; in a few seconds a new Day would dawn—a flake would separate itself from the infinite Future, and be born into the world. I stood awaiting the Incarnation of Time. A flapping wing broke on the solemn stillness. Two rooks rose slowly from the ground, where they had been preying upon the tenants of the turf. Below me, to the east and north, spread out the waters of the Firth of Forth—not a billow breaking against its rocky islets—its broad expanse of the colour of lead, sombre and waveless, like the lifeless waters of the Asphaltite Sea; while, toiling like an imp of darkness, a small steam-boat tore up its leaden-like surface, disappearing behind the house-tops of Leith. The spirits of night seemed hurrying to their dens, to escape the golden arrows of the God of Day. In the bowery gardens below me, the birds began an overture as the curtain of the Dawn was lifting. At length the sun shot up into the sky; then seemed to pause for some time, his lower limb resting on the dark sea, his upper almost touching a bank of overhanging cloud. Pale tremulous rays, like those of the aurora borealis, darted laterally from the orb, shooting quiveringly along the sky, and returning: the waves of light were ebbing and flowing on the sands of Night. The sea and the slopes of the Calton still lay in the dull hues of dawn; but a strange cold sun-gleam which one felt instinctively would be short-lived, glittered around me on the crest of the hill, and on the white stone monuments that crown it as with a diadem. Foremost and loftiest rose the noble columns of the National Monument, even in their imperfection the most Grecian of British edifices, standing aloft like the ruins of Minerva’s temple on the bluff Cape of Sunium, visible from afar to mariners entering the romantic Bay of the Forth. The glitter which now tinged them with gold was bright and brief as the national fervour which gave them birth. In a few minutes the sun passed up behind the bank of cloud, and nothing remained of his beams but a golden streak on the far edge of the waters.

Fair Summer has come, and the ocean wooes us. Breaking her ward, she has leapt like a lovely Bacchante to our arms; while men who have been “sighing like furnace” for her, and chiding the dull delay of her coming, now fly from her embraces into the sea—plunge into the haunts of the Nereids. In what “infernal machines” do they go a-wooing! And yet they appear to have every confidence in their natural powers of attraction; the Nereids run no danger of being deceived as to the _physique_ of their human admirers. Queer fishes some of them are certainly! Only look at yon big fat old fellow, for all the world like a skinned porpoise, floundering and blowing in the shallows like a stranded whale! while another more modest animal, of like dimensions, floats like cork or blubber in deep water, thumping energetically with leg and arm, and hides obesity in a cataract of foam. Yonder, over the clear blue depths, breasting at his ease the flood, goes the long steady stroke of the practised swimmer—an animal half-amphibious, seen at times afar off, lifting on the crest of a wave a mile at sea. With laugh and splutter a band of juveniles rub their heads with water in the most approved manner, as if they were a set of old topers afraid of apoplexy; or with whoop and hollo engage in a water-combat, or in a race in bunting that reminds one of running in sacks; while a still younger member of the human family roars lustily as he clings to his pitiless nurse’s neck, or emerges half-suffocated from the prescriptive thrice-repeated dip. Yet there is something gladsome in the flash of the waters around the sportive bathers, and in the glancing glitter of the sun-beams on the ivory-like arms that are swaying to and fro upon the blue waters. It speaks of Summer; and that of itself awakens gladness.

As we look upon the earth in a glorious summer-day, we feel as if all nature loved us, and that a spirit within is answering to the loving call of the outer world. We feel as if _caressed_ by the beauty floating around—as if the mission of nature were to delight us. And it is so. It was to be a joy for Man that this glorious world sprang out of Chaos, and it was to enjoy it that we were gifted with our many senses of beauty. How narrow the enjoyment of the body to the domain of the spirit! The possessions and enjoyments of man consist less in the acres we can win from our fellows, than in the wide universe around us. Creature-comforts are unequally divided, but the charm of existence, the joy that rays from all nature, are the property of all. Who can set a price upon the colours of the rose or the hues of sunset? Yet, would the Vernon Gallery be an adequate exchange? Water and air, prime necessaries of physical life, are not more free to all, than is its best and highest food everywhere accessible to the spirit. What we want is, to rub the dust of the earth off our souls, and let them mirror the beauty of the universe. What we want is, to open the nature within to the nature without—to clear the mind from ignorance, the heart from prejudice. We must learn to see things as they are—to find beauty in nature, love in man, good everywhere; not to shut our eyes or look through a distorting medium. We scramble for the crumbs of worldly success, and too often have neglected the higher delights that are free to our taking. Like the groveller in the Pilgrim’s Progress, we rake amid straws on the ground, when a crown of joy is ready to descend upon us if we will only look up. We turn aside the river from its bed, and toil in the sand for golden dust, destroying happiness in the search for its symbol, and forget that the world itself may be made golden, that the art of the Alchemist may be ours. The true sunshine of life is in the heart. It is there that the smile is born that makes the light of life, the rosy smile that makes the world of beauty, and keeps life sweet—the smile that “makes a summer where darkness else would be.”

We are in one of the pretty lanes of England. The smoke of a great city is beginning to curl up into the morning skies, but the sounds of that wakening Babylon cannot reach us in our green seclusion. As we step along lightly, cheerily, in the cool sunlight, hark to the glad voices of children; and lo! a cottage-home, sweeter-looking than any we have yet passed. Honeysuckles and jessamine wreathe the wooden trellis of the porch with verdure and flowers. In those flowers the early bee is hanging and humming, birds are chirping aloft, and cherubs are singing below. An urchin, with his yellow curls half-blinding his big blue eyes, sits on the sunny gravelwalk, playing with a frisky, red-collared kitten. On the steps of the door, beneath the shade of the trellis-work, sit two girls, a lapful of white roses before them, which they are gathering into a bouquet, or sticking into each other’s hair. What are they singing?

Come, come, come! Oh, the merry Summer morn!
From dewy slumbers breaking,
Birds and flowers are waking.
Come, come, come! and leave our beds forlorn!

Hark, hark, hark! I hear our playmates call!
Hurrah! for merry rambles!
Morn is the time for gambols.
Yes, yes, yes! Let’s go a-roving all!

Haste, haste, haste! To woodland dells away!
There flowers for us are springing,
And little birds are singing—
“Come, come, come! Good-morrow! come away!”

A wiseacre lately remarked, as a proof of the _sober sense_ of the age, that no one now sang about the happiness of childhood! _Sombre_ sense, he should have said,—if he misused the word “sense” at all. No happiness,—nay, no peculiar happiness in childhood! Does he mean to maintain that we get happier as we get older?—that life, at the age of Methuselah, is as joyous as at fifteen? Has novelty, which charms in all the details of existence, no charm in existence itself? Is suspicion—that infallible growth of years, that baneful result of knowledge of the world—no damper on happiness? Is innocence nothing? Is _ennui_ known to the young? No, no!

Youth is the summer of life; it is the very heyday of joy,—the poetry of existence. Youth beholds everything through a golden medium,—through the prism of fancy, not in the glass of reason; in the rose hue of idealism, not the naked forms that we call reality.

“All that’s bright must fade,
The brightest still the fleetest!”

We have but to look around us and within us to see the sad truth exemplified. Summer is fading with its roses—Youth vanishes with its dreams. “Passing away” is written on all things earthly. Yet “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” We have a compensating faculty, which gives immortality to the mortal in the cells of memory; the joys of which Time has robbed us still live on in perennial youth. Nay, more, they live unmarred by the sorrows that in actual life grow up along with them. As the colours of fancy fade from the Present, they gather in brighter radiance around the Past. We conserve the roses of Summer—let us embalm the memories of Youth.

THE POWER OF SMALL BEGINNINGS.

A grim Lion obstructs the paths of ardent Benevolence in its desire to lessen the monster evils of society, and constantly roars “Impossible! Impossible!” Well-disposed Affluence surveys the encroaching waves of destitution and crime as they roll onwards, spreading their dark waters over the face of society, and folds its hands in powerless despair,—a despair created by a false notion of the inefficacy of individual or limited action. “Who can stem such a tide?” it exclaims; “we must have some great comprehensive system. Without that, single efforts are useless.”

Upon this untrue and timid premise many a purse is closed, many a generous impulse checked. It is never remembered that all great facts, for evil or for good, are an aggregate of small details, and must be grappled with _in_ detail. Every one who hath and to spare, has it in his power to do some good and to check some evil; and if all those to whom the ability is given were to do their part, the great “Comprehensive System” which is so much prayed for would arrange itself. The hand of Charity is nowhere so open as in this country; but is often paralysed for the want of being well directed.

Of what individual energy can accomplish in a very limited sphere, we can now afford a practical instance. What a single individual in energetic earnest has effected in the “Devil’s Acre,” described in a former number,[6] can be done by any other single individual in any other sink of vice and iniquity, in every other part of the globe.

Footnote 6:

At page 297.

In the spring of 1848 the attention of Mr. Walker, the Westminster Missionary of the City Mission, was called to the necessity of applying some remedy to the alarming vice and destitution that prevailed amongst a large section of a densely peopled community, whose future prospects seemed to be totally neglected. A vast mass of convicted felons, and vagrants, who had given themselves up as entirely lost to human society, and whose ambition was solely how they could attain the skill of being the most accomplished burglars, congregate upon the “Devil’s Acre.” Most of these degraded youths were strangers to all religious and moral impressions—destitute of any ostensible means of obtaining an honest livelihood, and having no provision made for them when sent from prison. They had no alternative but again resorting to begging or stealing for a miserable existence; and not only they themselves being exposed to all the contaminating influences of bad example, and literally perishing for lack of knowledge, but also leading others astray—such as boys from nine to twelve years of age, whom, in a short time, they would train as clever in vice as themselves, and make them useful in their daily avocations.

Nearly ten years’ experience in visiting their haunts of misery and crime, and entering into friendly conversation with them, taught Mr. Walker that punishment acted with but little effect as a check upon criminal offenders; and it was thought more worthy of the Christian philanthropists to set on foot a system of improvement, which should change the habits and elevate the character of this degraded part of our population,—a system which should rescue them from the haunts of infamy, instil into their minds the principles of religion and morality, and train them to honest and industrious occupations. With these great objects in view, a scheme of training was commenced which has since flourished. _One lad_ was selected from the Ragged School, fed, and lodged, as an experiment. The boy had been a thief and vagrant for several years, was driven from his home through the ill-usage of a step-grandfather: the only clothing he possessed was an old tattered coat, and part of a pair of trousers, and these one complete mass of filth. After five months’ training, through the kindness of Lord Ashley, he was accepted as an emigrant to Australia. Finding he was successful, his joy and gratitude were unbounded. A short time before he embarked, he said, “If ever I should be possessed of a farm, it shall be called Lord Ashley’s Farm. I shall never forget the Ragged Schools; for if it had not been for it, instead of going to Australia with a good character, I should have been sent to some other colony loaded with chains.” He has since been heard of as being in a respectable situation, conducting himself with the strictest propriety.

Being successful in reclaiming one, Mr. Walker was encouraged to select six more from the same Ragged School, varying from the age of fifteen to nineteen years; although at the time it was not known where a shilling could be obtained towards their support, he was encouraged to persevere. A small room was taken at two shillings per week; a truss of straw was purchased, and a poor woman was kind enough to give two old rugs, which was the only covering for the six. They were content to live on a small portion of bread and dripping per day, and attend the Ragged School; at last an old sack was bought for the straw, and a piece of carpet, in addition to the two rugs, to cover them. One of them was heard to say one night, while absolutely enjoying this wretched accommodation, “Now, are we not comfortable?—should we not be thankful? How many poor families there are who have not such good beds to lie on!” One of those he addressed, aged nineteen years, had not known the comfort of such a bed for upwards of three years, having slept during that time in an empty cellar. Five of those lads are now in Australia, and the other—who had been the leader of a gang of thieves for several years—is now a consistent member and communicant in the Church, and fills a responsible situation in England.

When the experiment was in this condition, a benevolent lady not only contributed largely towards the support of the inmates, but also recommended her friends to follow her example. A larger room was taken; the lady ordered beds and bedding to be immediately purchased: the merits of the system became more publicly known; two additional rooms were taken, and ultimately the whole premises converted into a public institution, known as the Westminster Ragged Dormitory, and particularly alluded to in the article before mentioned.

Since its establishment, there have been one hundred and sixty-three applications. Seventy-six have been admitted from the streets; thirteen from various prisons, recommended by the Chaplains; twenty-three did not complete their probation; four were dismissed for misconduct; three absconded after completing their probation; five were dismissed for want of funds; two restored to their friends; two are filling situations in England; fifteen emigrated to Australia; five to the United States; and thirty are at present in the Institution.

The expense at which fifty-four young persons were thus, between April 1848 and May 1850, rescued from perdition, has been 376_l._ 16_s._ 3_d._, which took two years to collect and disburse. More than double the number of cases presented themselves than could be admitted, and five were obliged to be hurled back into crime and want after admission, for want of funds. We mention this to show what might have been done, had Mr. Walker’s efforts been seconded with anything like liberality.

As a specimen of the sort of stuff the promoters of this humble Institution had to work upon, we add the “case” of a couple of the inmates which was privately communicated to us. We shall call the boys Borley and Pole.

“R. Borley, 14 years of age, born in Kent Street, Borough; never knew his father; his mother died two years ago; she lived by hawking. Since her death he has lived by begging, sometimes got a parcel to carry at the Railway Station; also got jobs to carry baskets and hold horses at the Borough Market; when he had money, lodged in low lodging-houses, near the London Docks and in the Mint in the Borough. The most money he ever got in one day was 9_d._ He has been in the habit of attending the different markets in London. He has been weeks together without ever being in a bed; he generally slept about the markets, in passages, under arches, and in carts. He had no shirt for the last twelve months, no cap, no shoes; an old jacket and a pair of trousers were his only covering; sometimes two days without food, and when he had food, seldom anything but dry bread; sometimes in such a state of hunger, that he has been compelled to eat raw vegetables, this was the case when he took the fever; he had been lying out in the streets for some nights; he was in such a weak state that he dropped down in the streets. A gentleman lifted him up, took him to a shop and gave him some bread and cheese, afterwards took him to a magistrate, who sent him to the workhouse, where it was found the poor boy had fever, and was immediately sent to the fever hospital. When brought to Pear Street yesterday, he was not a little surprised to find the boy Pole in the school; he would not have known him but for his speech, so much had he improved in appearance. Pole had lived in the lodging-houses with him. He said he has cause to remember Pole. On one occasion he was Pole’s bedfellow, they were both in a most destitute state for want of clothing; neither of them had a shirt, but of the two, Borley had the best trousers; when he rose in the morning Pole was off and had put on Borley’s trousers, leaving behind him a pair that had but one leg, and that was in rags; although yesterday was their first meeting after this robbery, still it was a very happy one! They congratulated each other at the good fortune of being received into such an Institution. Borley tells me that Pole was a dreadful thief. He stole wherever he could; he brought the articles he stole to the lodging-house keepers, who bought them readily. So notorious did Pole become, that before morning he would have stolen the article he had sold or anything else, and sold it to another lodging-house keeper. Thus he went on until he could scarce get lodgings either in the Borough or Whitechapel. Since Pole has been in Pear Street, he has never shown anything but a desire to do what is right. Borley is an interesting lad, and will do well.”

May 16, 1850.

One Mr. Walker, who would begin, as he did, with one wretched boy in each metropolitan district, and in each town throughout Great Britain, would do more to reduce poor’s rates, county rates, police rates—to supersede “great penal experiments,” and to diminish enormous judicial and penal expenditure, than all the political economists and “great system” doctors in the world. But the main thing is to begin at the cradle. It is many millions of times more hopeful to prevent, than to cure.

Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).