Chapter II: Part 2

We are in a storeroom of the strange productions of all corners of the earth, from the air above and from the waters below. Every particle in every bottle that looks perhaps to the uninitiated eye only a mass of bad fish preserved in worse pickle, has its value. A thin slice of it taken out and placed under the microscope, illustrates some law of the animal economy, or displays, perhaps, some long undiscovered fact, or shows to the surprise of the gazer, a series of lines beautifully arranged, or perhaps curiously mingled, and rich in their figured combinations as the frozen moisture of a window-frame on a winter’s morning. To this room as to a general centre come contributions from all corners of the earth; the donors being chiefly medical men employed on expeditions, or in the public service, though other medicos, who go to seek fortune in strange lands, often remember their alma mater, and pack up a bottle of curious things “to send to the College.” Doctors on shipboard, doctors with armies, doctors in Arctic ships, or on Niger expeditions; in the far regions of Hindûstan, and in the fogs and storms of Labrador, think now and then of their “dissecting days,” and of the noble collection in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which every true student feels bound to honour, and to help to make complete. Many, when going forth into distant countries, are supplied from this place with bottles specially adapted to receive objects in request, and receive also a volume of instructions, how the specimens may be best preserved. “When a quadruped is too large to be secured whole, cut off the portion of the head containing the teeth,” says one direction. “If no more can be done,” says another, “preserve the heart and great blood-vessels.” “Of a full-grown whale,” says a third of these notes, “send home the eyes with the surrounding skin, their muscles and fat in an entire mass.” “When many specimens of a rare and curious bird are procured, the heads of a few should be taken off and preserved in spirit.” “When alligators and crocodiles are too large to be preserved whole, secure some part. The bones of such things are especially desirable. Secure also the eggs in different stages.” “Snakes may be preserved whole, or in part, especially the heads, for the examination of their teeth and fangs.” “Eyes of fishes are proper objects of preservation.” Such are a few of the hints sent forth to their medical disciples by the College, and the fruits of the system are a bountiful supply. Never a week passes but something rare or curious makes its appearance in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; sometimes from one quarter, sometimes from another, but there is always something coming, either by messenger or parcel-cart. Apart from these foreign sources, there are other contributaries to the general stock. Country doctors and hospital surgeons, from time to time, send in their quota; the Zoological Society likewise contribute all their dead animals. When the elephant died at the Regent’s Park Gardens, a College student and an assistant were busily occupied for days dissecting the huge animal. When the rhinoceros expired at the same place, a portion of its viscera was hailed as a prize; and when the whale was cast, not long ago, upon the shores of the Thames, the watermen who claimed it as their booty, steamed off to the College to find a customer for portions of the unwieldy monster; nor were they disappointed. Beyond all these, there still remains another searcher out of materials for the scalpel and the microscope. He is a character in his way. By trade, half cattle-slaughterer half-oysterman, he is by choice a sort of dilettante anatomist. One day he is killing oxen and sheep in Clare Market, and the next is scouring the same market for morbid specimens “for Mr. Quickett, at the College.” He knows an unhealthy sheep by its looks, and watches its post mortem with the eye of a savant. Many a choice specimen has he caught up in his time from amongst the offal and garbage of that fustiest of markets in the fustiest of neighbourhoods. Indeed, through him, all that is unusual in ox, calf, sheep, fish, or fowl, found within the confines of Clare Market, finds its way to the “work shop” of the College to be investigated by scalpel and microscope. When a butcher is known to have any diseased sheep, our collector hovers about his slaughter-house, and that which is bad food for the public, often affords him and his patron a prize. He is a sort of jackal for the anatomists—a kind of cadger in the service of science—a veritable snatcher-up of ill-conditioned trifles.

Returning to the room in the College roof, where the general cornucopia of strange things is emptied, we find its presiding genius in Mr. Quekett, a quiet enthusiast in his way, who goes on from month to month and year to year, watching, working, and chronicling such facts as can be made out. When a novelty comes in, it is examined, described, investigated by the microscope; and, if worthy, is sketched on stone for printing. It is then catalogued, and placed in spirit for preservation—minute portions, perhaps, being mounted on glass as objects for the microscope. Thus disposed of, it becomes a “store preparation.” From this store the lectures at the College are illustrated by examples; and from it also are the bright bottles in the Hunterian Museum kept complete. From time to time something very rare comes to hand, and then there is quite an excitement in the place. It is turned about, examined, and discussed, with as much zest as a lady would display when first opening a present of jewels, or first criticising a new ball-dress. If the new acquisition be an animal but recently dead, a drop of its blood is sought and placed under the microscope to see the diameter of its globules; if it has a coat of fur, perhaps one of the hairs are next submitted to the same test; and then a fine section of its bone passes a similar ordeal. Its brain is investigated, weighed, and placed in spirit for preservation. Its general characteristics are then gone over, and a description of them written down. If worthy of a place in the Museum, this description goes to make a paragraph in the catalogues of the Collection—fine quarto volumes, of which there are many now complete, containing more exact anatomical and physiological descriptions of objects, than perhaps any other work extant.

The last contribution to the series of Catalogues was made in the room we have been examining. Its production was the constant labour of two years; and the volume contains exact particulars of many facts never before noticed. Amongst other things, for instance, made out with certainty in this place by Mr. Quekett, after months of patient investigation, was the elementary differences in the character of bone. To the common eye and common idea, all bone is simply bone; and for common purposes the word indicates closely enough what the speaker would describe. Not so to the naturalist and the physiologist; and so scalpel and microscope went to work: the sea, the land, and the air, lent each their creatures peculiar to itself, and the labour of the search was at length rewarded by a discovery that each great class of living things has an elementary difference in the bones upon which its structure is built up. Hence, when a particle of bony matter is now placed under the microscope, come whence it may—from a geological strata, or from the depths of the sea, or from within the cere-cloth of a mummy—the observer, guided by Mr. Quekett’s observations, knows whether it belonged in life to bird, beast, or fish.

Glancing round this anatomical workshop, we find, amongst other things, some preparations showing the nature of pearls. Examine them, and we find that there are dark and dingy pearls, just as there are handsome and ugly men; the dark pearl being found on the dark shell of the fish, the white brilliant one upon the smooth inside shell. Going further in the search, we find that the smooth glittering lining upon which the fish moves, is known as the _nacre_, and that it is produced by a portion of the animal called _the mantle_: and for explanation sake we may add, that gourmands practically know the mantle as _the beard_ of the oyster. When living in its glossy house, should any foreign substance find its way through the shell to disturb the smoothness so essential to its ease, the fish coats the offending substance with nacre, and a pearl is thus formed. The pearl is, in fact, a little globe of the smooth glossy substance yielded by the oyster’s beard; yielded ordinarily to smooth the narrow home to which his nature binds him, but yielded in round drops—real pearly tears—if he is hurt. When a beauty glides proudly among a throng of admirers, her hair clustering with pearls, she little thinks that her ornaments are products of pain and diseased action, endured by the most unpoetical of shell-fish.

Leaving the centre-room of the three in the College roof, let us just glance at the other two apartments. Upon entering one we see the walls lined with boxes, something like those in a milliner’s shop, but, instead of holding laces and ribands, we find them labelled “Wolf,” “Racoon,” “Penguin,” “Lion,” “Albatross,” and so on with names of birds, and beasts, and fishes. On lifting a lid, we find the boxes filled with the bones of the different creatures named; not a complete skeleton of any one, perhaps, but portions of half-a-dozen. In this room, the two students attached to the College carry on dissections, under the directions of the superior authorities. What they do is entered in a book kept posted up, and this affords another source for reference as to anatomical facts. When they have laboured here for three years, they have the option of a commission as Assistant Surgeon in the Army, Navy, or East India Company’s service, as a reward for their College work.

If the atmosphere of the two apartments we have investigated was bad, that of the third room was infinitely worse, though windows and ventilators are constantly open. In this place large preparations are kept, and all the specimens are here put into the bottles required for exhibition in the Museum. This third room, like the first, has a curiously characteristic look. It would make a fine original for a picture of an alchemist’s study. On one side is a large structure of brickwork with pipes and taps, conveying the idea of a furnace and still, or of an oven. Alongside it is a bath and a table, and the purpose of the whole is for _injecting_ large animals. This is a very difficult operation, the object being to drive a kind of hot liquid sealing-wax into every artery of the body, even the most minute. All things brought here, and capable of it, are injected somewhat after this fashion before they pass under the scalpel. Besides this oven-looking structure there are pans, and tubs, and casks; one containing a small dromedary, another being “a cask of camel.” A painter’s easel stands there ready for use, and on the floor are some bones of a megatherium; the tables are covered with bottles and jars, and the walls are similarly decorated. Strings of bladders hang about, and under foot we see thin sheets of lead coated with tin-foil; these latter being used for tying down the preparation bottles so that they may for years remain air-tight; a tedious and somewhat difficult operation. In this place every year they use scores, sometimes hundreds of gallons of alcohol; one fact which helps to show that museums on a large scale are expensive establishments.

Here, as elsewhere, however, in our establishments, whatever may be expended on materials, the men who do the work of science are but indifferently paid. But lucre is not their sole reward. No mere money payment could compensate (for instance) a man for spending a lifetime in this College of Surgeons’ roof. Forget the object in view; ignore the charm that science has for its votaries; and this place becomes a literal inferno, filled with pestilential fumes, and surrounded by horrible sights. But they who fix the salaries know how much the pursuit of science is a labour of love; and so they pay the man of science badly, not here alone, but in all the scientific branches of the public service. But the science-worker though he may feel the injustice, yet moves on his way rejoicing, pleased with his unceasing search into the secret workings of nature, and exhilarated from time to time by some discovery, or by the confirmation of some cherished notion. And though the glittering prizes of life be bestowed on strivers in far different walks, the student of nature holds on his cheerful and philosophic way, rewarded by the glimpses he gets of the power that made and sustains all terrestrial things, and rewarded, moreover, by the holy contact with that infinite wisdom seen at work in the construction, the adaptation, and the continuance of the marvellous and illimitably varied works it is the business of his life to investigate.

CHIPS.

NICE WHITE VEAL.

We shudder at the cruelties practised upon Strasbourg geese to produce the celebrated _pâtés de foie ǧras_; but remorse would assuredly afflict the amateurs of veal with indigestion, if they reflected on the tortures to which calves are subjected to cause the very unnatural colour of the meat which they so much prize. The natural and wholesome tint of veal is not white, but pink. An ancient French traveller in England (1690) says that the English veal has not the “beautiful red colour of the French.” Dr. Smollett, in “Peregrine Pickle,” upbraids epicures, on the scores both of cruelty and unwholesomeness, saying that our best veal is like a “fricassee of kid gloves,” and the sauce of “melted butter” is rendered necessary only by the absence of the juices drained out of the unfortunate animal before death.

The process of killing a calf is a refinement of cruelty worthy of a Grand Inquisitor. The beast is, while alive, bled several times; in summer, during several hours of the night, and frequently till it faints; when a plug is put into the orifice till “next time.” But the lengthened punishment of the most unoffending of animals is at the actual “killing.” It is tied together, neck and heels, much as a dead animal when packed in a basket and slung up by a rope, with the head downwards. A vein is then opened, till it lingeringly bleeds to death. Two or three “knocks” are given to it with the pole-axe whilst it hangs loose in the air, and the flesh is beaten with sticks, technically termed “dressing” it, some time before feeling has ceased to exist. All this may be verified by those who insist on seeing the penetralia of the slaughter-houses; or the poor animal may be seen moaning and writhing—by a mere glance—on many days of the week, in Warwick Lane, Newgate Street.

This mode of bleaching veal is not only a crime, but a blunder. The flesh would be more palatable and nutritious killed speedily and mercifully. But were it otherwise, and had it been twenty times more a luxury, who, professing to honour the common Creator, would, for the sensual gratification of the palate, cause the calf to be thus tortured?

“ALL THINGS IN THE WORLD MUST CHANGE.”

Would’st thou have it always Spring,
Though she cometh flower-laden?
Though sweet-throated birds do sing?
Thou would’st weary of it, Maiden.
Dost thou never feel desire
That thy womanhood were nearer?
Doth thy loving heart ne’er tire,
Longing yet for something dearer?

Would’st have Summer ever stay—
Droughty Summer—bright and burning?
Dost thou not, oft in the day,
Long for still, cool, night’s returning?
Dost thou not grow weary, Youth,
Of thy pleasures, vain though pleasant—
Thinking Life has more of Truth
Than the satiating present?

Would’st have Autumn never go?
(Autumn, Winter’s wealthy neighbour),
Stacks would rise, and wine-press flow
Vainly, did’st thou always labour.
When thy child is on thy knee
And thy heart with love’s o’erflowing,
Dost thou never long to see
What is in the future’s showing?

When old Winter, cold and hoar,
Cometh, blowing his ten fingers,
Hanging ice-drops on the door
Whilst he at the threshold lingers,
Would’st thou ever vigil keep
With a mate so full of sorrow?
Better to thy bed and sleep,
Nor wake till th’ Eternal morrow!

THE LAST OF A LONG LINE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.

In Great Stockington there lived a race of paupers. From the year of the 42nd of Elizabeth, or 1601, down to the present generation, this race maintained an uninterrupted descent. They were a steady and unbroken line of paupers, as the parish books testify. From generation to generation their demands on the parish funds stand recorded. There were no _lacunæ_ in their career; there never failed an heir to these families; fed on the bread of idleness and legal provision, these people flourished, increased, and multiplied. Sometimes compelled to work for the weekly dole which they received, they never acquired a taste for labour, or lost the taste for the bread for which they did not labour. These paupers regarded this maintenance by no means as a disgrace. They claimed it as a right,—as their patrimony. They contended that one-third of the property of the Church had been given by benevolent individuals for the support of the poor, and that what the Reformation wrongfully deprived them of, the great enactment of Elizabeth rightfully—and only rightfully—restored.

Those who imagine that all paupers merely claimed parish relief because the law ordained it, commit a great error. There were numbers who were hereditary paupers, and that on a tradition carefully handed down, that they were only manfully claiming their own. They traced their claims from the most ancient feudal times, when the lord was as much bound to maintain his villein in gross, as the villein was to work for the lord. These paupers were, in fact, or claimed to be, the original _adscripti glebæ_, and to have as much a claim to parish support as the landed proprietor had to his land. For this reason, in the old Catholic times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away and remaining absent from their hundred for a year and a day, dwelling for that period in a walled town, these people were amongst the most diligent attendants at the Abbey doors, and when the Abbeys were dissolved, were, no doubt, amongst the most daring of these thieves, vagabonds, and sturdy rogues, who, after the Robin Hood fashion, beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their black mail in a very unceremonious style. It was out of this class that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign, and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their number.

That they continued to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,” overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the severe laws against them of whipping, burning in the hand, in the forehead or the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country with alarm, is evident by the very act itself of Elizabeth.

Amongst these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in Stockington, there was a family of the name of Deg. This family had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share of its ancient inheritance. It appeared from the parish records, that they had practised in different periods the crafts of shoemaking, tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the stocking-frame, they had, one and all of them, followed the profession of stocking weavers, or as they were there called, stockingers. This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical or intellectual powers. To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to and fro, was a thing that might either be carried to a degree of extreme diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness. An “idle stockinger” was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labour,—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that “hard work was enough to kill a man.” The Degs were seldom, therefore, out of work, but they did not get enough to meet and tie. They had but little work if times were bad, and if they were good, they had large families, and sickly wives or children. Be times what they would, therefore, the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table. Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length not even to trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their young children for it; and it was duly paid. Did any parish officer, indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness, want of work, and poor earnings brought up, that he most likely got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate, and acquired a character for hardheartedness that stuck to him.

So parish overseers learnt to let the Degs alone; and their children regularly brought up to receive the parish money for their parents, were impatient as they grew up to receive it for themselves. Marriages in the Deg family were consequently very early, and there were plenty of instances of married Degs claiming parish relief under the age of twenty, on the plea of being the parent of two children. One such precocious individual being asked by a rather verdant officer why he had married before he was able to maintain a family, replied, in much astonishment, that he had married in order to maintain himself by parish assistance. That he never had been able to maintain himself by his labour, nor ever expected to do it; his only hope, therefore, lay in marrying, and becoming the father of two children, to which patriarchal rank he had now attained, and demanded his “pay.”

Thus had lived and nourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony, the parish, for upwards of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage, they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an alehouse and of gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. It was become pure pauper blood. The Degs married, if not entirely among Degs, yet amongst the same class. None but a pauper would dream of marrying a Deg. The Degs, therefore, were in constitution, in mind, in habit, and in inclination, paupers. But a pure and unmixed class of this kind does not die out like an aristocratic stereotype. It increases and multiplies. The lower the grade, the more prolific, as is sometimes seen on a large and even national scale. The Degs threatened, therefore, to become a most formidable clan in the lower purlieus of Stockington, but luckily there is so much virtue even in evils, that one, not rarely cures another. War, the great evil, cleared the town of Degs.

Fond of idleness, of indulgence, of money easily got, and as easily spent, the Degs were rapidly drained off by recruiting parties during the last war. The young men enlisted, and were marched away; the young women married soldiers that were quartered in the town from time to time, and marched away with them. There were, eventually, none of the once numerous Degs left except a few old people, whom death was sure to draft off at no distant period with his regiment of the line which has no end. Parish overseers, magistrates, and master manufacturers, felicitated themselves at this unhoped-for deliverance from the ancient family of the Degs.

But one cold, clear, winter evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare shorn hedges, and poking his sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime of life, and in the great coat and thick worsted gloves of a wealthy traveller, cast a glance at the wretched creature trudging heavily on, expecting a pitiful appeal to his sensibilities, and thinking it a bore to have to pull off a glove and dive into his pocket for a copper; but to his surprise there was no demand, only a low curtsey, and the glimpse of a face of singular honesty of expression, and of excessive weariness.

Spires was a man of warm feelings; he looked earnestly at the woman, and thought he had never seen such a picture of fatigue in his life. He pulled up and said,

“You seem very tired, my good woman.”

“Awfully tired, Sir.”

“And are you going far to night?”

“To Great Stockington, Sir, if God give me strength.”

“To Stockington!” exclaimed Mr. Spires. “Why you seem ready to drop. You’ll never reach it. You’d better stop at the next village.”

“Ay, Sir, it’s easy stopping, for those that have money.”

“And you’ve none, eh?”

“As God lives, Sir, I’ve a sixpence, and that’s all.”

Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket, and held out to her the next instant, half-a-crown.

“There stop, poor thing—make yourself comfortable—it’s quite out of the question to reach Stockington. But stay—are your friends living in Stockington—what are you?”

“A poor soldier’s widow, Sir. And may God Almighty bless you!” said the poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large brown eyes as she curtsied very low.

“A soldier’s widow,” said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest place in the manufacturer’s heart, for he was a very loyal man, and vehement champion of his country’s honour in the war. “So young,” said he, “how did you lose your husband?”

“He fell, Sir,” said the poor woman; but she could get no further; she suddenly caught up the corner of her grey cloak, covered her face with it, and burst into an excess of grief.

The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his careless question; he sate watching her for a moment in silence, and then said, “Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see you to Stockington.”

The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig, expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a cheerful tone to comfort her, “Bless me, but that is a fine thumping fellow, though. I don’t wonder you are tired, carrying such a load.”

The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to her breast, as if she felt it a great blessing and no load: the gig drove rapidly on.

Presently Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.

“So you are from Stockington?”

“No Sir, my husband was.”

“So: what was his name?”

“John Deg, Sir.”

“Deg?” said Mr. Spires. “Deg, did you say?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off towards his own side of the gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman was somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent too.

After awhile Mr. Spires said again, “And do you hope to find friends in Stockington? Had you none where you came from?”

“None Sir, none in the world!” said the poor woman, and again her feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, “I was in service, Sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother only was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died. When—when the news came from abroad—that—when I was a widow, Sir, I went back to my native place, and the parish officers said I must go to my husband’s parish lest I and my child should become troublesome.”

“You asked relief of them?”

“Never; Oh, God knows, no, never! My family have never asked a penny of a parish. They would die first, and so would I, Sir; but they said I might do it, and I had better go to my husband’s parish at once—and they offered me money to go.”

“And you took it, of course?”

“No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and laundering, and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them, and came off. I felt hurt, Sir; my heart rose against the treatment of the parish, and I thought I should be better amongst my husband’s friends—and my child would, if anything happened to me; I had no friends of my own.”

Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence. “Did your husband tell you anything of his friends? What sort of a man was he?”

“Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, Sir; but not bad to me. He always said his friends were well off in Stockington.”

“He did!” said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if bolting the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.

The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The manufacturer whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut with the whip, drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling down; it was numbing cold; a grey fog rose from the river as they thundered over the old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black smoky houses loomed through the dusk before them. They were at Stockington.

As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town, Mr. Spires again opened his mouth.

“I should be sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg,” he said, “but I have my fears that you are coming to this place with false expectations. I fear your husband did not give you the truest possible account of his family here.”

“Oh, Sir! What—what is it?” exclaimed the poor woman; “in God’s name, tell me!”

“Why, nothing more than this,” said the manufacturer, “that there are very few of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can do nothing for you.”

The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.

“But don’t be cast down,” said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her what a pauper family it really was, for he saw that she was a very feeling woman, and he thought she would learn that soon enough. He felt that her husband had from vanity given her a false account of his connections; and he was really sorry for her.

“Don’t be cast down,” he went on, “you can wash and iron, you say; you are young and strong: those are your friends. Depend on them, and they’ll be better friends to you than any other.”

The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on, through many long and narrow streets, with gas flaring from the shops, but with few people in the streets, and these hurrying shivering along the pavement, so intense was the cold. Anon they stopped at a large pair of gates; the manufacturer rung a bell, which he could reach from his gig, and the gates presently were flung open, and they drove into a spacious yard, with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp burning before it, on one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.

“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said Mr. Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing the poor woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”

The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and, following the old man servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with her living load, stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and her cold ride.

We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spire’s linen, and the manner in which she executed her task insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in those meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass, attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of about the same age as Mrs. Deg’s child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows. Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker’s birds, and by his flute, on which he often played after his work was done.

Mrs. Deg took a great friendship for this shoemaker: and he and his wife, a quiet, kindhearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents, but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of person, whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather her little boy had died than have been familiarised with the spirit and habits of those old people. Despise them she struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them on condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting story to recount all the troubles, annoyance, and querulous complaints, and even bitter accusations that she received from these connections, whom she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of her crosses in her life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them alone.

The shoemaker neighbour was a stout protection to her against the greedy demands of these old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely, suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman with a flourishing business, and a neat and soon well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for her boy, and she kept her resolve in firmness and gentleness.

The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town meadows to gather groundsell and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and while he sate on a stile and read in a little old book of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.

The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little Simon Deg was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He manifested the utmost uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the grass; he would burst with tears if they persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful, and that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat a bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up in the air. He expected to see him in an ecstacy of delight: his own children clapped their hands in transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up another?” asked the shoemaker.

“No, no,” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up there, and he mayn’t like it.”

The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet, if we don’t take care.”

The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was especially indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases amongst the boys of the neighbourhood.

He was now about twelve years of age; when, going one day with a basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’s for his mother, he was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window. The great war was raging; there was much distress amongst the manufacturers; and the people were suffering and exasperated against their masters. Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, was particularly obnoxious to the workpeople, who uttered violent threats against him. For this reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the gates, was chained a huge and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and seemed not to notice them, but on the entrance of a stranger, he rose up, barked fiercely, and came to the length of his chain. This always drew the attention of the porter, if he were away from his box, and few persons dared to pass till he came.

Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head, when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first, reared himself with his back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say, “Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Spires, who sate near his counting-house window at his books, was struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a clerk, “What boy is that?”

“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.

“Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! Why that’s the child that Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Stockington: and what a strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now!”

As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires called him to the counting-house door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and learning, and so on. Simon, taking off his cap with much respect, answered in such a clear and modest way, and with a voice that had so much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer was greatly taken with him.

“That’s no Deg,” said he, when he again entered the counting-house, “not a bit of it. He’s all Goodrick, or whatever his mother’s name was, every inch of him.”

The consequence of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon after perched on a stool in Mr. Spires’ counting-house, where he continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a single daughter; and such were Simon Deg’s talents, attention to business, and genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave him a share in the concern. He was himself now getting less fond of exertion than he had been, and placed the most implicit reliance on Simon’s judgment and general management. Yet no two men could be more unlike in their opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires was a staunch tory of the staunch old school. He was for Church and King, and for things remaining for ever as they had been. Simon, on the other hand, had liberal and reforming notions. He was for the improvement of the people, and their admission to many privileges. Mr. Spires was, therefore, liked by the leading men of the place, and disliked by the people. Simon’s estimation was precisely in the opposite direction. But this did not disturb their friendship; it required another disturbing cause—and that came.

Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires, grew attached to each other; and, as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in the business, neither of the young people deemed that he would object to a partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made a tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted at, than Mr. Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of Ulysses.

“What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously opulent Spires?”

The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with an apoplexy. The ghosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he was black in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of leeches and lancet, that the life of the great man was saved. But there was an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it was done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for dignity he had, though the last of a long line of paupers—his own dignity, not his ancestors’—took silently, yet not unrespectfully, his share—a good, round sum, and entered another house of business.

For several years there appeared to be a feud and a bitterness between the former friends; yet it showed itself in no other manner than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood pre-eminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artisans. In his factory he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had set up a school for the children in the evenings, with a reading-room and conversation-room for the workpeople, and encouraged them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures. Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of the manufacturers.

“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often, to his wife and daughter, who only sighed, and were silent.

Then came a furious election. The town, for a fortnight, more resembled the worst corner of Tartarus than a Christian borough. Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, all sorts of violence and abuse ruled and raged till the blood of all Stockington was at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen, ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond measure. But popular though he still was, tho other and old tory side triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and, when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party. Down went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace. There was a tremendous tempest of sticks, brickbats, paving-stones, and rotten eggs. In the midst of this, Simon Deg, and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of an hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down, and trampled on by the crowd. In an instant, and, before his friends had missed him from amongst them, Simon Deg was seen darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigour, and gesticulating, and no doubt shouting vehemently to the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment, his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger: but, another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighbouring shop. It was Simon Deg, assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr. Spires.

Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he had received no serious injury.

“They had like to have done for me though,” said he.

“Yes, and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.

“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted manufacturer; “let me know? I owe him my life.”

“There he is!” said several gentlemen, at the same instant, pushing forward Simon Deg.

“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. “Was it thee, my boy?” He did more, he stretched out his hand: the young man clasped it eagerly, and the two stood silent, and, with a heartfelt emotion, which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union more sacred than esteem.

A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend, in defence of conscientious principle, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.

Simon Deg was now the richest man in Stockington. His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.

Twenty-five years afterwards, when the worthy old Spires was dead, and Simon Deg had himself two sons attained to manhood; when he had five times been Mayor of Stockington, and had been knighted on the presentation of a loyal address; still his mother was living to see it; and William Watson, the shoemaker, was acting as the sort of orderly at Sir Simon’s chief manufactory. He occupied the Lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving on as it should do.

It was amazing how the most plebeian name of Simon Deg had slid, under the hands of the Heralds, into the really aristocratical one of Sir Simon Degge. They had traced him up a collateral kinship, spite of his own consciousness, to a baronet of the same name of the county of Stafford, and had given him a coat of arms that was really astonishing.

It was some years before this, that Sir Roger Rockville had breathed his last. His title and estate had fallen into litigation. Owing to two generations having passed without any issue of the Rockville family except the one son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so mingled with obscuring circumstances, and so equally balanced, that the lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep the property in Chancery, till they had not only consumed all the ready money and rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself. To save the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise. A neighbouring squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure the title, on condition that the rest carried off the residuum of the estate. The woods and lands of Rockville were announced for sale!

It was at this juncture that old William Watson reminded Sir Simon Degge of a conversation in the great grove of Rockville, which they had held at the time that Sir Roger was endeavouring to drive the people thence. “What a divine pleasure might this man enjoy,” said Simon Deg to his humble friend, “if he had a heart capable of letting others enjoy themselves.”

“But we talk without the estate,” said William Watson, “what might we do if we were tried with it?”

Sir Simon was silent for a moment; then observed that there was sound philosophy in William Watson’s remark. He said no more, but went away; and the next day announced to the astonished old man that he had purchased the groves and the whole ancient estate of Rockville!

Sir Simon Degge, the last of a long line of paupers, was become the possessor of the noble estate of Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville, the last of a long line of aristocrats!

The following summer when the hay was lying in fragrant cocks in the great meadows of Rockville, and on the little islands in the river, Sir Simon Degge, Baronet, of Rockville,—for such was now his title—through the suggestion of a great lawyer, formerly Recorder of the Borough of Stockington, to the crown—held a grand fête on the occasion of his coming to reside at Rockville Hall, henceforth the family seat of the Degges. His house and gardens had all been restored to the most consummate order. For years Sir Simon had been a great purchaser of works of art and literature, paintings, statuary, books, and articles of antiquity, including rich armour and precious works in ivory and gold.

First and foremost he gave a great banquet to his wealthy friends, and no man with a million and a half is without them—and in abundance. In the second place, he gave a substantial dinner to all his tenantry, from the wealthy farmer of five hundred acres to the tenant of a cottage. On this occasion he said, “Game is a subject of great heart-burning and of great injustice to the country. It was the bane of my predecessor: let us take care it is not ours. Let every man kill the game on the land that he rents—then he will not destroy it utterly, nor allow it to grow into a nuisance. I am fond of a gun myself, but I trust to find enough for my propensity to the chace in my own fields and woods—if I occasionally extend my pursuit across the lands of my tenants, it shall not be to carry off the first-fruits of their feeding, and I shall still hold the enjoyment as a favour.”

We need not say that this speech was applauded most vociferously. Thirdly, and lastly, he gave a grand entertainment to all his workpeople, both of the town and the country. His house and gardens were thrown open to the inspection of the whole assembled company. The delighted crowd admired immensely the pictures and the pleasant gardens. On the lawn, lying between the great grove and the hall, an enormous tent was pitched, or rather a vast canvas canopy erected, open on all sides, in which was laid a charming banquet; a military band from Stockington barracks playing during the time. Here Sir Simon made a speech as rapturously received as that to the farmers. It was to the effect, that all the old privileges of wandering in the grove, and angling, and boating on the river were restored. The inn was already rebuilt in a handsome Elizabethan style, larger than before, and to prevent it ever becoming a fane of intemperance, he had there posted as landlord, he hoped for many years to come, his old friend and benefactor, William Watson. William Watson should protect the inn from riot, and they themselves the groves and river banks from injury.