Chapter I: Front Matter

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

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 4.] SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER.

No longer ago than this Easter time last past, we became acquainted with the subject of the present notice. Our knowledge of him is not by any means an intimate one, and is only of a public nature. We have never interchanged any conversation with him, except on one occasion when he asked us to have the goodness to take off our hat, to which we replied ‘Certainly.’

MR. BOOLEY was born (we believe) in Rood Lane, in the City of London. He is now a gentleman advanced in life, and has for some years resided in the neighbourhood of Islington. His father was a wholesale grocer (perhaps), and he was (possibly) in the same way of business; or he may, at an early age, have become a clerk in the Bank of England, or in a private bank, or in the India House. It will be observed that we make no pretence of having any information in reference to the private history of this remarkable man, and that our account of it must be received as rather speculative than authentic.

In person MR. BOOLEY is below the middle size, and corpulent. His countenance is florid, he is perfectly bald, and soon hot; and there is a composure in his gait and manner, calculated to impress a stranger with the idea of his being, on the whole, an unwieldy man. It is only in his eye that the adventurous character of MR. BOOLEY is seen to shine. It is a moist, bright eye, of a cheerful expression, and indicative of keen and eager curiosity.

It was not until late in life that MR. BOOLEY conceived the idea of entering on the extraordinary amount of travel he has since accomplished. He had attained the age of sixty-five, before he left England for the first time. In all the immense journies he has since performed, he has never laid aside the English dress, nor departed in the slightest degree from English customs. Neither does he speak a word of any language but his own.

MR. BOOLEY’S powers of endurance are wonderful. All climates are alike to him. Nothing exhausts him; no alternations of heat and cold appear to have the least effect upon his hardy frame. His capacity of travelling, day and night, for thousands of miles, has never been approached by any traveller of whom we have any knowledge through the help of books. An intelligent Englishman may have occasionally pointed out to him objects and scenes of interest; but otherwise he has travelled alone, and unattended. Though remarkable for personal cleanliness, he has carried no luggage; and his diet has been of the simplest kind. He has often found a biscuit, or a bun, sufficient for his support over a vast tract of country. Frequently, he has travelled hundreds of miles, fasting, without the least abatement of his natural spirits. It says much for the Total Abstinence cause, that MR. BOOLEY has never had recourse to the artificial stimulus of alcohol, to sustain him under his fatigues.

His first departure from the sedentary and monotonous life he had hitherto led, strikingly exemplifies, we think, the energetic character, long suppressed by that unchanging routine. Without any communication with any member of his family—MR. BOOLEY has never been married, but has many relations—without announcing his intention to his solicitor, or banker, or any person entrusted with the management of his affairs, he closed the door of his house behind him at one o’clock in the afternoon of a certain day, and immediately proceeded to New Orleans, in the United States of America.

His intention was to ascend the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, to the base of the Rocky Mountains. Taking his passage in a steamboat without loss of time, he was soon upon the bosom of the Father of Waters, as the Indians call the mighty stream which, night and day, is always carrying huge instalments of the vast continent of the New World, down into the sea.

MR. BOOLEY found it singularly interesting to observe the various stages of civilisation obtaining on the banks of these mighty rivers. Leaving the luxury and brightness of New Orleans—a somewhat feverish luxury and brightness, he observed, as if the swampy soil were too much enriched in the hot sun with the bodies of dead slaves—and passing various towns in every stage of progress, it was very curious to observe the changes of civilisation and of vegetation too. Here, where the doomed Negro race were working in the plantations, while the republican overseer looked on, whip in hand, tropical trees were growing, beautiful flowers in bloom; the alligator, with his horribly sly face, and his jaws like two great saws, was basking on the mud; and the strange moss of the country was hanging in wreaths and garlands on the trees, like votive offerings. A little farther towards the west, and the trees and flowers were changed, the moss was gone, younger infant towns were rising, forests were slowly disappearing, and the trees, obliged to aid in the destruction of their kind, fed the heavily-breathing monster that came clanking up those solitudes, laden with the pioneers of the advancing human army. The river itself, that moving highway, showed him every kind of floating contrivance, from the lumbering flat-bottomed boat, and the raft of logs, upward to the steamboat, and downward to the poor Indian’s frail canoe. A winding thread through the enormous range of country, unrolling itself before the wanderer like the magic skein in the story, he saw it tracked by wanderers of every kind, roaming from the more settled world, to those first nests of men. The floating theatre, dwelling-house, hotel, museum, shop; the floating mechanism for screwing the trunks of mighty trees out of the mud, like antediluvian teeth; the rapidly-flowing river, and the blazing woods; he left them all behind—town, city, and log-cabin, too; and floated up into the prairies and savannahs, among the deserted lodges of tribes of savages, and among their dead, lying alone on little wooden stages with their stark faces upward towards the sky. Among the blazing grass, and herds of buffaloes and wild horses, and among the wigwams of the fast-declining Indians, he began to consider how, in the eternal current of progress setting across this globe in one unchangeable direction, like the unseen agency that points the needle to the pole, the Chiefs who only dance the dances of their fathers, and will never have a new figure for a new tune, and the Medicine-men who know no Medicine but what was Medicine a hundred years ago, must be surely and inevitably swept from the earth, whether they be Choctawas, Mandans, Britons, Austrians, or Chinese.

He was struck, too, by the reflection that savage nature was not by any means such a fine and noble spectacle as some delight to represent it. He found it a poor, greasy, paint-plastered, miserable thing enough; but a very little way above the beasts in most respects; in many customs a long way below them. It occurred to him that the ‘Big Bird,’ or the ‘Blue Fish,’ or any of the other Braves, was but a troublesome braggart after all; making a mighty whooping and holloaing about nothing particular, doing very little for science, not much more than the monkeys for art, scarcely anything worth mentioning for letters, and not often making the world greatly better than he found it. Civilisation, MR. BOOLEY concluded, was, on the whole, with all its blemishes, a more imposing sight, and a far better thing to stand by.

MR. BOOLEY’S observations of the celestial bodies, on this voyage, were principally confined to the discovery of the alarming fact, that light had altogether departed from the moon; which presented the appearance of a white dinner-plate. The clouds, too, conducted themselves in an extraordinary manner, and assumed the most eccentric forms, while the sun rose and set in a very reckless way. On his return to his native country, however, he had the satisfaction of finding all these things as usual.

It might have been expected that at his advanced age, retired from the active duties of life, blest with a competency, and happy in the affections of his numerous relations, MR. BOOLEY would now have settled himself down, to muse, for the remainder of his days, over the new stock of experience thus acquired. But travel had whetted, not satisfied, his appetite; and remembering that he had not seen the Ohio river, except at the point of its junction with the Mississippi, he returned to the United States, after a short interval of repose, and appearing suddenly at Cincinnati, the queen City of the West, traversed the clear waters of the Ohio to its Falls. In this expedition he had the pleasure of encountering a party of intelligent workmen from Birmingham who were making the same tour. Also his nephew Septimus, aged only thirteen. This intrepid boy had started from Peckham, in the old country, with two and sixpence sterling in his pocket; and had, when he encountered his uncle at a point of the Ohio River, called Snaggy Bar, still one shilling of that sum remaining!

Again at home, MR. BOOLEY was so pressed by his appetite for knowledge as to remain at home only one day. At the expiration of that short period, he actually started for New Zealand.

It is almost incredible that a man in MR. BOOLEY’S station of life, however adventurous his nature, and however few his artificial wants, should cast himself on a voyage of thirteen thousand miles from Great Britain with no other outfit than his watch and purse, and no arms but his walking-stick. We are, however, assured on the best authority, that thus he made the passage out, and thus appeared, in the act of wiping his smoking head with his pocket-handkerchief, at the entrance to Port Nicholson in Cook’s Straits: with the very spot within his range of vision, where his illustrious predecessor, Captain Cook, so unhappily slain at Otaheite, once anchored.

After contemplating the swarms of cattle maintained on the hills in this neighbourhood, and always to be found by the stockmen when they are wanted, though nobody takes any care of them—which MR. BOOLEY considered the more remarkable, as their natural objection to be killed might be supposed to be augmented by the beauty of the climate—MR. BOOLEY proceeded to the town of Wellington. Having minutely examined it in every point, and made himself perfect master of the whole natural history and process of manufacture of the flax-plant, with its splendid yellow blossoms, he repaired to a Native Pa, which, unlike the Native Pa to which he was accustomed, he found to be a town, and not a parent. Here he observed a Chief with a long spear, making every demonstration of spitting a visitor, but really giving him the Maori or welcome—a word MR. BOOLEY is inclined to derive from the known hospitality of our English Mayors—and here also he observed some Europeans rubbing noses, by way of shaking hands, with the aboriginal inhabitants. After participating in an affray between the natives and the English soldiery, in which the former were defeated with great loss, he plunged into the Bush, and there camped out for some months, until he had made a survey of the whole country.

While leading this wild life, encamped by night near a stream for the convenience of water, in a Ware, or hut, built open in the front, with a roof sloping backward to the ground, and made of poles, covered and enclosed with bark or fern, it was MR. BOOLEY’S singular fortune to encounter Miss Creeble, of The Misses Creebles’ Boarding and Day Establishment for Young Ladies, Kennington Oval, who, accompanied by three of her young ladies in search of information, had achieved this marvellous journey, and was then also in the Bush. Miss Creeble having very unsettled opinions on the subject of gunpowder, was afraid that it entered into the composition of the fire before the tent, and that something would presently blow up or go off. MR. BOOLEY, as a more experienced traveller, assuring her that there was no danger; and calming the fears of the young ladies, an acquaintance commenced between them. They accomplished the rest of their travels in New Zealand together, and the best understanding prevailed among the little party. They took notice of the trees, as the Kaikatea, the Kauri, the Ruta, the Pukatea, the Hinau, and the Tanakaka—names which Miss Creeble had a bland relish in pronouncing. They admired the beautiful, arborescent, palm-like fern, abounding everywhere, and frequently exceeding thirty feet in height. They wondered at the curious owl, who is supposed to demand ‘More Pork!’ wherever he flies, and whom Miss Creeble termed ‘an admonition of Nature’s against greediness!’ And they contemplated some very rampant natives, of cannibal propensities. After many pleasing and instructive vicissitudes, they returned to England in company, where the ladies were safely put into a hackney cabriolet by MR. BOOLEY, in Leicester Square, London.

And now, indeed, it might have been imagined that that roving spirit, tired of rambling about the world, would have settled down at home in peace and honor. Not so. After repairing to the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, and accompanying Her Majesty on her visit to Ireland (which he characterised as ‘a magnificent Exhibition’), MR. BOOLEY, with his usual absence of preparation, departed for Australia.

Here again, he lived out in the Bush, passing his time chiefly among the working-gangs of convicts who were carrying timber. He was much impressed by the ferocious mastiffs chained to barrels, who assist the sentries in keeping guard over those misdoers. But he observed that the atmosphere in this part of the world, unlike the descriptions he had read of it, was extremely thick, and that objects were misty, and difficult to be discerned. From a certain unsteadiness and trembling, too, which he frequently remarked on the face of Nature, he was led to conclude that this part of the globe was subject to convulsive heavings and earthquakes. This caused him to return, with some precipitation.

Again at home, and probably reflecting that the countries he had hitherto visited were new in the history of man, this extraordinary traveller resolved to proceed up the Nile to the second cataract. At the next performance of the great ceremony of ‘opening the Nile,’ at Cairo, MR. BOOLEY was present.

Along that wonderful river, associated with such stupendous fables, and with a history more prodigious than any fancy of man, in its vast and gorgeous facts; among temples, palaces, pyramids, colossal statues, crocodiles, tombs, obelisks, mummies, sand and ruin; he proceeded, like an opium-eater in a mighty dream. Thebes rose before him. An avenue of two hundred sphinxes, with not a head among them,—one of six or eight, or ten such avenues, all leading to a common centre,—conducted to the Temple of Carnak: its walls, eighty feet high and twenty-five feet thick, a mile and three-quarters in circumference; the interior of its tremendous hall, occupying an area of forty-seven thousand square feet, large enough to hold four great Christian churches, and yet not more than one-seventh part of the entire ruin. Obelisks he saw, thousands of years of age, as sharp as if the chisel had cut their edges yesterday; colossal statues fifty-two feet high, with ‘little’ fingers five feet and a half long; a very world of ruins, that were marvellous old ruins in the days of Herodotus; tombs cut high up in the rock, where European travellers live solitary, as in stony crows’ nests, burning mummied Thebans, gentle and simple,—of the dried blood-royal maybe,—for their daily fuel, and making articles of furniture of their dusty coffins. Upon the walls of temples, in colors fresh and bright as those of yesterday, he read the conquests of great Egyptian monarchs; upon the tombs of humbler people in the same blooming symbols, he saw their ancient way of working at their trades, of riding, driving, feasting, playing games; of marrying and burying, and performing on instruments, and singing songs, and healing by the power of animal magnetism, and performing all the occupations of life. He visited the quarries of Silsileh, whence nearly all the red stone used by the ancient Egyptian architects and sculptors came; and there beheld enormous single-stoned colossal figures nearly finished—redly snowed up, as it were, and trying hard to break out—waiting for the finishing touches, never to be given by the mummied hands of thousands of years ago. In front of the temple of Abou Simbel, he saw gigantic figures sixty feet in height and twenty-one across the shoulders, dwarfing live men on camels down to pigmies. Elsewhere he beheld complacent monsters tumbled down like ill-used Dolls of a Titanic make, and staring with stupid benignity at the arid earth whereon their huge faces rested. His last look of that amazing land was at the Great Sphinx, buried in the sand—sand in its eyes, sand in its ears, sand drifted on its broken nose, sand lodging, feet deep, in the ledges of its head—struggling out of a wide sea of sand, as if to look hopelessly forth for the ancient glories once surrounding it.

In this expedition, MR. BOOLEY acquired some curious information in reference to the language of hieroglyphics. He encountered the Simoom in the Desert, and lay down, with the rest of his caravan, until it had passed over. He also beheld on the horizon some of those stalking pillars of sand, apparently reaching from earth to heaven, which, with the red sun shining through them, so terrified the Arabs attendant on Bruce, that they fell prostrate, crying that the Day of Judgment was come. More Copts, Turks, Arabs, Fellahs, Bedouins, Mosques, Mamelukes, and Moosulmen he saw, than we have space to tell. His days were all Arabian Nights, and he saw wonders without end.

This might have satiated any ordinary man, for a time at least. But MR. BOOLEY, being no ordinary man, within twenty-four hours of his arrival at home was making The Overland Journey to India.

He has emphatically described this, as ‘a beautiful piece of scenery,’ and ‘a perfect picture.’ The appearance of Malta and Gibraltar he can never sufficiently commend. In crossing the Desert from Grand Cairo to Suez, he was particularly struck by the undulations of the Sandscape (he preferred that word to Landscape, as more expressive of the region), and by the incident of beholding a caravan upon its line of march; a spectacle which in the remembrance always affords him the utmost pleasure. Of the stations on the Desert, and the cinnamon gardens of Ceylon, he likewise entertains a lively recollection. Calcutta he praises also; though he has been heard to observe that the British military at that seat of Government were not as well proportioned as he could desire the soldiers of his country to be; and that the breed of horses there in use was susceptible of some improvement.

Once more in his native land, with the vigor of his constitution unimpaired by the many toils and fatigues he had encountered, what had MR. BOOLEY now to do, but, full of years and honor, to recline upon the grateful appreciation of his Queen and country, always eager to distinguish peaceful merit? What had he now to do, but to receive the decoration ever ready to be bestowed, in England, on men deservedly distinguished, and to take his place among the best? He had this to do. He had yet to achieve the most astonishing enterprise for which he was reserved. In all the countries he had yet visited, he had seen no frost and snow. He resolved to make a voyage to the ice-bound Arctic Regions.

In pursuance of this surprising determination, MR. BOOLEY accompanied the Expedition under Sir James Ross, consisting of Her Majesty’s ships, the Enterprise and Investigator, which sailed from the river Thames on the 12th of May, 1848, and which, on the 11th of September, entered Port Leopold Harbor.

In this inhospitable region, surrounded by eternal ice, cheered by no glimpse of the sun, shrouded in gloom and darkness, MR. BOOLEY passed the entire winter. The ships were covered in, and fortified all round with walls of ice and snow; the masts were frozen up; hoar frost settled on the yards, tops, shrouds, stays, and rigging; around, in every direction, lay an interminable waste, on which only the bright stars, the yellow moon, and the vivid Aurora Borealis looked, by night or day.

And yet the desolate sublimity of this astounding spectacle was broken in a pleasant and surprising manner. In the remote solitude to which he had penetrated, MR. BOOLEY (who saw no Esquimaux during his stay, though he looked for them in every direction) had the happiness of encountering two Scotch gardeners; several English compositors, accompanied by their wives; three brass founders from the neighbourhood of Long Acre, London; two coach painters, a gold-beater and his only daughter, by trade a stay-maker; and several other working-people from sundry parts of Great Britain who had conceived the extraordinary idea of ‘holiday-making’ in the frozen wilderness. Hither too, had Miss Creeble and her three young ladies penetrated: the latter attired in braided peacoats of a comparatively light material; and Miss Creeble defended from the inclemency of a Polar Winter by no other outer garment than a wadded Polka-jacket. He found this courageous lady in the act of explaining, to the youthful sharers of her toils, the various phases of nature by which they were surrounded. Her explanations were principally wrong, but her intentions always admirable.

Cheered by the society of these fellow-adventurers, MR. BOOLEY slowly glided on into the summer season. And now, at midnight, all was bright and shining. Mountains of ice, wedged and broken into the strangest forms—jagged points, spires, pinnacles, pyramids, turrets, columns in endless succession and in infinite variety, flashing and sparkling with ten thousand hues, as though the treasures of the earth were frozen up in all that water—appeared on every side. Masses of ice, floating and driving hither and thither, menaced the hardy voyagers with destruction; and threatened to crush their strong ships, like nutshells. But, below those ships was clear sea-water, now; the fortifying walls were gone; the yards, tops, shrouds and rigging, free from that hoary rust of long inaction, showed like themselves again; and the sails, bursting from the masts, like foliage which the welcome sun at length developed, spread themselves to the wind, and wafted the travellers away.

In the short interval that has elapsed since his safe return to the land of his birth, MR. BOOLEY has decided on no new expedition; but he feels that he will yet be called upon to undertake one, perhaps of greater magnitude than any he has achieved, and frequently remarks, in his own easy way, that he wonders where the deuce he will be taken to next! Possessed of good health and good spirits, with powers unimpaired by all he has gone through, and with an increase of appetite still growing with what it feeds on, what may not be expected yet from this extraordinary man!

It was only at the close of Easter week that, sitting in an arm chair, at a private Club called the Social Oysters, assembling at Highbury Barn, where he is much respected, this indefatigable traveller expressed himself in the following terms:

‘It is very gratifying to me,’ said he, ‘to have seen so much at my time of life, and to have acquired a knowledge of the countries I have visited, which I could not have derived from books alone. When I was a boy, such travelling would have been impossible, as the gigantic-moving panorama or diorama mode of conveyance, which I have principally adopted (all my modes of conveyance have been pictorial), had then not been attempted. It is a delightful characteristic of these times, that new and cheap means are continually being devised, for conveying the results of actual experience, to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves; and to bring them within the reach of the people—emphatically of the people; for it is they at large who are addressed in these endeavours, and not exclusive audiences. Hence,’ said MR. BOOLEY, ‘even if I see a run on an idea, like the panorama one, it awakens no ill-humour within me, but gives me pleasant thoughts. Some of the best results of actual travel are suggested by such means to those whose lot it is to stay at home. New worlds open out to them, beyond their little worlds, and widen their range of reflection, information, sympathy, and interest. The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among us all. I shall, therefore,’ said MR. BOOLEY, ‘now propose to the Social Oysters the healths of Mr. Banvard, Mr. Brees, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Allen, Mr. Prout, Messrs. Bonomi, Fahey, and Warren, Mr. Thomas Grieve, and Mr. Burford. Long life to them all, and more power to their pencils!’

The Social Oysters having drunk this toast with acclamation, MR. BOOLEY proceeded to entertain them with anecdotes of his travels. This he is in the habit of doing after they have feasted together, according to the manner of Sinbad the Sailor—except that he does not bestow upon the Social Oysters the munificent reward of one hundred sequins per night, for listening.

LOADED DICE.

Several years ago I made a tour through some of the Southern Counties of England with a friend. We travelled in an open carriage, stopping for a few hours a day, or a week, as it might be, wherever there was any thing to be seen: and we generally got through one stage before breakfast, because it gave our horses rest, and ourselves the chance of enjoying the brown bread, new milk, and fresh eggs of those country roadside inns, which are fast becoming subjects for archæological investigation.

One evening my friend said, ‘To-morrow, we will breakfast at T——. I want to inquire about a family named Lovell, who used to live there. I met the husband and wife and two lovely children, one summer at Exmouth. We became very intimate, and I thought them particularly interesting people, but I have never seen them since.’

The next morning’s sun shone as brightly as heart could desire, and after a delightful drive, we reached the outskirts of the town about nine o’clock.

‘Oh, what a pretty inn!’ said I, as we approached a small white house, with a sign swinging in front of it, and a flower-garden on one side.

‘Stop, John,’ cried my friend, ‘we shall get a much cleaner breakfast here than in the town, I dare say; and if there is anything to be seen there, we can walk to it;’ so we alighted, and were shown into a neat little parlour, with white curtains, where an unexceptionable rural breakfast was soon placed before us.

‘Pray do you happen to know anything of a family called Lovell?’ inquired my friend, whose name, by the way, was Markham. ‘Mr. Lovell was a clergyman.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ answered the girl who attended us, apparently the landlord’s daughter, ‘Mr. Lovell is the vicar of our parish.’

‘Indeed! and does he live near here?’

‘Yes, Ma’am, he lives at the vicarage. It’s just down that lane opposite, about a quarter of a mile from here; or you can go across the fields, if you please, to where you see that tower; it’s close by there.’

‘And which is the pleasantest road?’ inquired Mrs. Markham.

‘Well, Ma’am, I think by the fields is the pleasantest, if you don’t mind a stile or two; and, besides, you get the best view of the Abbey by going that way.’

‘Is that tower we see part of the Abbey?’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ answered the girl, ‘and the vicarage is just the other side of it.’

Armed with these instructions, as soon as we had finished our breakfast we started across the fields, and after a pleasant walk of twenty minutes we found ourselves in an old churchyard, amongst a cluster of the most picturesque ruins we had ever seen. With the exception of the grey tower, which we had espied from the inn, and which had doubtless been the belfry, the remains were not considerable. There was the outer wall of the chancel, and the broken step that had led to the high altar, and there were sections of aisles, and part of a cloister, all gracefully festooned with mosses and ivy; whilst mingled with the grass-grown graves of the prosaic dead, there were the massive tombs of the Dame Margerys and the Sir Hildebrands of more romantic periods. All was ruin and decay; but such poetic ruin! such picturesque decay! And just beyond the tall grey tower, there was the loveliest, smiling, little garden, and the prettiest cottage, that imagination could picture. The day was so bright, the grass so green, the flowers so gay, the air so balmy with their sweet perfumes, the birds sang so cheerily in the apple and cherry trees, that all nature seemed rejoicing.

‘Well,’ said my friend, as she seated herself on the fragment of a pillar, and looked around her, ‘now that I see this place, I understand the sort of people the Lovells were.’

‘What sort of people were they?’ said I.

‘Why, as I said before, interesting people. In the first place, they were both extremely handsome.’

‘But the locality had nothing to do with their good looks, I presume,’ said I.

‘I am not sure of that,’ she answered; ‘when there is the least foundation of taste or intellect to set out with, the beauty of external nature, and the picturesque accidents that harmonise with it, do, I am persuaded, by their gentle and elevating influences on the mind, make the handsome handsomer, and the ugly less ugly. But it was not alone the good looks of the Lovells that struck me, but their air of refinement and high breeding, and I should say high birth—though I know nothing about their extraction—combined with their undisguised poverty and as evident contentment. Now, I can understand such people finding here an appropriate home, and being satisfied with their small share of this world’s goods; because here the dreams of romance writers about Love in a Cottage might be somewhat realised; poverty might be graceful and poetical here; and then, you know, they have no rent to pay.’

‘Very true,’ said I; ‘but suppose they had sixteen daughters, like a half-pay officer I once met on board a steam-packet?’

‘That would spoil it certainly,’ said Mrs. Markham; ‘but let us hope they have not. When I knew them they had only two children, a boy and a girl, called Charles and Emily; two of the prettiest creatures I ever beheld!’

As my friend thought it yet rather early for a visit, we had remained chattering in this way for more than an hour, sometimes seated on a tombstone, or a fallen column; sometimes peering amongst the carved fragments that were scattered about the ground, and sometimes looking over the hedge into the little garden, the wicket of which was immediately behind the tower. The weather being warm, most of the windows of the vicarage were open and the blinds were all down; we had not yet seen a soul stirring, and were just wondering whether we might venture to present ourselves at the door, when a strain of distant music struck upon our ears. ‘Hark!’ I said, ‘how exquisite! It was the only thing wanting to complete the charm.’

‘It’s a military band, I think,’ said Mrs. Markham, ‘you know we passed some barracks before we reached the Inn.’

Nearer and nearer drew the sound, solemn and slow; the band was evidently approaching by the green lane that skirted the fields we had come by. ‘Hush,’ said I, laying my hand on my friend’s arm, with a strange sinking of the heart; ‘they are playing the Dead March in Saul! Don’t you hear the muffled drums? It’s a funeral, but where’s the grave?’

‘There!’ said she, pointing to a spot close under the hedge where some earth had been thrown up; but the aperture was covered with a plank, probably to prevent accidents.

There are few ceremonies in life at once so touching, so impressive, so sad, and yet so beautiful, as a soldier’s funeral! Ordinary funerals with their unwieldy hearses and feathers, and the absurd looking mutes, and the ‘inky cloaks’ and weepers, of hired mourners, always seem to me like a mockery of the dead; the appointments border so closely on the grotesque; they are so little in keeping with the true, the only view of death that can render life endurable! There is such a tone of exaggerated——forced, heavy, over-acted gravity about the whole thing, that one had need to have a deep personal interest involved in the scene, to be able to shut one’s eyes to the burlesque side of it. But a military funeral, how different! There you see death in life and life in death! There is nothing over-strained, nothing overdone. At once simple and solemn, decent and decorous, consoling, yet sad. The chief mourners, at best, are generally true mourners, for they have lost a brother with whom ‘they sat but yesterday at meat;’ and whilst they are comparing memories, recalling how merry they had many a day been together, and the solemn tones of that sublime music float upon the air, we can imagine the freed and satisfied soul wafted on those harmonious breathings to its Heavenly home; and our hearts are melted, our imaginations exalted, our faith invigorated, and we come away the better for what we have seen.

I believe some such reflections as these were passing through our minds, for we both remained silent and listening, till the swinging-to of the little wicket, which communicated with the garden, aroused us; but nobody appeared, and the tower being at the moment betwixt us and it, we could not see who had entered. Almost at the same moment, a man came in from a gate on the opposite side, and advancing to where the earth was thrown up, lifted the plank and discovered the newly made grave. He was soon followed by some boys, and several respectable-looking persons came into the enclosure, whilst nearer and nearer drew the sound of the muffled drums, and now we descried the firing party and their officer, who led the procession with their arms reversed, each man wearing above the elbow a piece of black crape and a small bow of white satin ribbon; the band still playing that solemn strain. Then came the coffin, borne by six soldiers. Six officers bore up the pall, all quite young men; and on the coffin lay the shako, sword, side-belt, and white gloves of the deceased. A long train of mourners marched two and two, in open file, the privates first, the officers last. Sorrow was imprinted on every face; there was no unseemly chattering, no wandering eyes; if a word was exchanged, it was in a whisper, and the sad shake of the head showed of whom they were discoursing. All this we observed as they marched through the lane that skirted one side of the churchyard. As they neared the gate the band ceased to play.

‘See there,’ said Mrs. Markham, directing my attention to the cottage, ‘there comes Mr. Lovell. Oh, how he is changed!’ and whilst she spoke, the clergyman entering by the wicket, advanced to meet the procession at the gate, where he commenced reading the funeral service as he moved backwards towards the grave, round which the firing party, leaning on their firelocks, now formed. Then came those awful words, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ the hollow sound of the earth upon the coffin, and three volleys fired over the grave, finished the solemn ceremony.

When the procession entered the churchyard, we had retired behind the broken wall of the chancel, whence, without being observed, we had watched the whole scene with intense interest. Just as the words ‘Ashes to ashes! dust to dust!’ were pronounced, I happened to raise my eyes towards the grey tower, and then, peering through one of the narrow slits, I saw the face of a man—such a face! Never to my latest day can I forget the expression of those features! If ever there was despair and anguish written on a human countenance, it was there! And yet so young! so beautiful! A cold chill ran through my veins as I pressed Mrs. Markham’s arm. ‘Look up at the tower!’ I whispered.

‘My God! What can it be?’ she answered, turning quite pale! ‘And Mr. Lovell, did you observe how his voice shook? at first, I thought it was illness; but he seems bowed down with grief. Every face looks awestruck! There must be some tragedy here—something more than the death of an individual!’ and fearing, under this impression, that our visit might prove untimely, we resolved to return to the inn, and endeavour to discover if anything unusual had really occurred. Before we moved, I looked up at the narrow slit—the face was no longer there; but as we passed round to the other side of the tower, we saw a tall, slender figure, attired in a loose coat, pass slowly through the wicket, cross the garden, and enter the house. We only caught a glimpse of the profile; the head hung down upon the breast; the eyes were bent upon the ground; but we knew it was the same face we had seen above.

We went back to the inn, where our inquiries elicited some information, which made us wish to know more: but it was not till we went into the town that we obtained the following details of this mournful drama, of which we had thus accidentally witnessed one impressive scene.

Mr. Lovell, as Mrs. Markham had conjectured, was a man of good family, but no fortune; he might have had a large one, could he have made up his mind to marry Lady Elizabeth Wentworth, the bride selected for him by a wealthy uncle who proposed to make him his heir; but preferring poverty with Emily Dering, he was disinherited. He never repented his choice, although he remained vicar of a small parish, and a poor man all his life. The two children whom Mrs. Markham had seen, were the only ones they had, and through the excellent management of Mrs. Lovell, and the moderation of her husband’s desires, they had enjoyed an unusual degree of happiness in this sort of graceful poverty, till the young Charles and Emily were grown up, and it was time to think what was to be done with them. The son had been prepared for Oxford by the father, and the daughter, under the tuition of her mother, was remarkably well educated and accomplished; but it became necessary to consider the future: Charles must be sent to college, since the only chance of finding a provision for him was in the Church, although the expense of maintaining him there could be ill afforded; so, in order in some degree to balance the outlay, it was, after much deliberation, agreed that Emily should accept a situation as governess in London. The proposal was made by herself, and the rather consented to, that, in case of the death of her parents, she would almost inevitably have had to seek some such means of subsistence. These partings were the first sorrows that had reached the Lovells.

At first, all went well; Charles was not wanting in ability nor in a moderate degree of application; and Emily wrote cheerily of her new life. She was kindly received, well treated, and associated with the family on the footing of a friend. Neither did further experience seem to diminish her satisfaction. She saw a great many gay people—some of whom she named; and, amongst the rest, there not unfrequently appeared the name of Herbert. Mr. Herbert was in the army, and being a distant connexion of the family with whom she resided, was a frequent visitor at their house. ‘She was sure papa and mamma would like him.’ Once the mother smiled, and said she hoped Emily was not falling in love; but no more was thought of it. In the meantime Charles had found out that there was time for many things at Oxford, besides study. He was naturally fond of society, and had a remarkable capacity for excelling in all kinds of games. He was agreeable, lively, exceedingly handsome, and sang charmingly, having been trained in part-singing by his mother. No young man at Oxford was more _fêté_; but alas! he was very poor, and poverty poisoned all his enjoyments. For some time he resisted temptation; but after a terrible struggle—for he adored his family—he gave way, and ran in debt, and although the imprudence only augmented his misery, he had not resolution to retrace his steps, but advanced further and further on this broad road to ruin, so that he had come home for the vacation shortly before our visit to T——, threatened with all manner of annoyances if he did not carry back a sufficient sum to satisfy his most clamorous creditors. He had assured them he would do so, but where was he to get the money? Certainly not from his parents; he well knew they had it not; nor had he a friend in the world from whom he could hope assistance in such an emergency. In his despair he often thought of running away—going to Australia, America, New Zealand, anywhere; but he had not even the means to do this. He suffered indescribable tortures, and saw no hope of relief.

It was just at this period that Herbert’s regiment happened to be quartered at T——. Charles had occasionally seen his name in his sister’s letters, and heard that there was a Herbert now in the barracks, but he was ignorant whether or not it was the same person; and when he accidentally fell into the society of some of the junior officers, and was invited by Herbert himself to dine at the mess, pride prevented his ascertaining the fact. He did not wish to betray that his sister was a governess. Herbert, however, knew full well that their visitor was the brother of Emily Lovell, but partly for reasons of his own, and partly because he penetrated the weakness of the other, he abstained from mentioning her name.

Now, this town of T—— was, and probably is, about the dullest quarter in all England! The officers hated it, there was no flirting, no dancing, no hunting, no anything. Not a man of them knew what to do with himself. The old ones wandered about and played at whist, the young ones took to hazard and three-card-loo, playing at first for moderate stakes, but soon getting on to high ones. Two or three civilians of the neighbourhood joined the party, Charles Lovell amongst the rest. Had they begun with playing high, he would have been excluded for want of funds; but whilst they played low, he won, so that when they increased the stakes, trusting to a continuance of his good fortune, he was eager to go on with them. Neither did his luck altogether desert him; on the whole, he rather won than lost; but he foresaw that one bad night would break him, and he should be obliged to retire, forfeiting his amusement and mortifying his pride. It was just at this crisis, that, one night, an accident, which caused him to win a considerable sum, set him upon the notion of turning chance into certainty. Whilst shuffling the cards, he dropped the ace of spades into his lap, caught it up, replaced it in the pack, and dealt it to himself. No one else had seen the card, no observation was made, and a terrible thought came into his head!

Whether loo or hazard was played, Charles Lovell had, night after night, a most extraordinary run of luck. He won large sums, and saw before him the early prospect of paying his debts and clearing all his difficulties.

Amongst the young men who played at the table, some had plenty of money and cared little for their losses; but others were not so well off, and one of these was Edward Herbert. He, too, was the son of poor parents who had straitened themselves to put him in the army, and it was with infinite difficulty and privation that his widowed mother had amassed the needful sum to purchase for him a company, which was now becoming vacant. The retiring officer’s papers were already sent in, and Herbert’s money was lodged at Cox and Greenwood’s; but before the answer from the Horse-Guards arrived, he had lost every sixpence. Nearly the whole sum had become the property of Charles Lovell.

Herbert was a fine young man, honourable, generous, impetuous, and endowed with an acute sense of shame. He determined instantly to pay the debts, but he knew that his own prospects were ruined for life; he wrote to the agents to send him the money and withdraw his name from the list of purchasers. But how was he to support his mother’s grief? How meet the eye of the girl he loved? She, who he knew adored him, and whose hand it was agreed between them he should ask of her parents as soon as he was gazetted a captain! The anguish of mind he suffered then threw him into a fever, and he lay for several days betwixt life and death, and happily unconscious of his misery.

Meantime, another scene was being enacted elsewhere. The officers, who night after night found themselves losers, had not for some time entertained the least idea of foul play, but at length, one of them observing something suspicious, began to watch, and satisfied himself, by a peculiar method adopted by Lovell in ‘throwing his mains,’ that he was the culprit. His suspicions were whispered from one to another, till they nearly all entertained them, with the exception of Herbert, who, being looked upon as Lovell’s most especial friend, was not told. So unwilling were these young men to blast, for ever, the character of the visitor whom they had so much liked, and to strike a fatal blow at the happiness and respectability of his family, that they were hesitating how to proceed, whether to openly accuse him or privately reprove and expel him, when Herbert’s heavy loss decided the question.

Herbert himself, overwhelmed with despair, had quitted the room, the rest were still seated around the table, when having given each other a signal, one of them, called Frank Houston, arose and said: ‘Gentlemen, it gives me great pain to have to call your attention to a very strange—a very distressing circumstance. For some time past there has been an extraordinary run of luck in one direction—we have all observed it—all remarked on it. Mr. Herbert has at this moment retired a heavy loser. There is, indeed, as far as I know, but one winner amongst us—but one, and he a winner to a very considerable amount; the rest all losers. God forbid, that I should rashly accuse any man! Lightly blast any man’s character! But I am bound to say, that I fear the money we have lost has not been fairly won. There has been foul play! I forbear to name the party—the facts sufficiently indicate him.’

Who would not have pitied Lovell, when, livid with horror and conscious guilt, he vainly tried to say something? ‘Indeed—I assure you—I never’—but words would not come; he faltered and rushed out of the room in a transport of agony. They did pity him; and when he was gone, agreed amongst themselves to hush up the affair: but unfortunately, the civilians of the party, who had not been let into the secret, took up his defence. They not only believed the accusation unfounded, but felt it as an affront offered to their townsman; they blustered about it a good deal, and there was nothing left for it but to appoint a committee of investigation. Alas! the evidence was overwhelming! It turned out that the dice and cards had been supplied by Lovell. The former, still on the table, were found on examination to be loaded. In fact, he had had a pair as a curiosity long in his possession, and had obtained others from a disreputable character at Oxford. No doubt remained of his guilt.

All this while Herbert had been too ill to be addressed on the subject; but symptoms of recovery were now beginning to appear; and as nobody was aware that he had any particular interest in the Lovell family, the affair was communicated to him. At first he refused to believe in his friend’s guilt, and became violently irritated. His informants assured him they would be too happy to find they were mistaken, but that since the inquiry no hope of such an issue remained, and he sank into a gloomy silence.

On the following morning, when his servant came to his room door, he found it locked. When, at the desire of the surgeon, it was broken open, Herbert was found a corpse, and a discharged pistol lying beside him. An inquest sat upon the body, and the verdict brought in was _Temporary Insanity_. There never was one more just.

Preparations were now made for the funeral—that funeral which we had witnessed; but before the day appointed for it arrived, another chapter of this sad story was unfolded.

When Charles left the barracks on that fatal night, instead of going home, he passed the dark hours in wandering wildly about the country; but when morning dawned, fearing the eye of man, he returned to the vicarage, and slunk unobserved to his chamber. When he did not appear at breakfast, his mother sought him in his room, where she found him in bed. He said he was very ill—and so indeed he was—and begged to be left alone; but as he was no better on the following day, she insisted on sending for medical advice. The doctor found him with all those physical symptoms that are apt to supervene from great anxiety of mind; and saying he could get no sleep, Charles requested to have some laudanum; but the physician was on his guard, for although the parties concerned wished to keep the thing private, some rumours had got abroad that awakened his caution.

The parents, meanwhile, had not the slightest anticipation of the thunderbolt that was about to fall upon them. They lived a very retired life, were acquainted with none of the officers—and they were even ignorant of the amount of their son’s intimacy with the regiment. Thus, when news of Herbert’s lamentable death reached them, the mother said to her son: ‘Charles, did you know a young man in the barracks called Herbert; a lieutenant, I believe? By the bye, I hope it’s not Emily’s Mr. Herbert.’

‘Did I know him?’ said Charles, turning suddenly towards her, for, under pretence that the light annoyed him, he always lay with his face to the wall. ‘Why do you ask, mother?’

‘Because he’s dead. He had a fever, and—’

‘Herbert dead!’ cried Charles, suddenly sitting up in the bed.

‘Yes, he had a fever, and it is supposed he was delirious, for he blew out his brains; there is a report that he had been playing high, and lost a great deal of money. What’s the matter, dear? Oh, Charles, I shouldn’t have told you! I was not aware that you knew him!’

‘Fetch my father here, and, Mother, you come back with him!’ said Charles, speaking with a strange sternness of tone, and wildly motioning her out of the room.

When the parents came, he bade them sit down beside him; and then, with a degree of remorse and anguish that no words could portray, he told them all; whilst they, with blanched cheeks and fainting hearts, listened to the dire confession.

‘And here I am,’ he exclaimed, as he ended, ‘a cowardly scoundrel that has not dared to die! Oh, Herbert! happy, happy, Herbert! Would I were with you!’

At that moment the door opened, and a beautiful, bright, smiling, joyous face peeped in. It was Emily Lovell, the beloved daughter, the adored sister, arrived from London in compliance with a letter received a few days previously from Herbert, wherein he had told her that by the time she received it, he would be a captain. She had come to introduce him to her parents as her affianced husband. She feared no refusal; well she knew how rejoiced they would be to see her the wife of so kind and honourable a man. But they were ignorant of all this, and in the fulness of their agony, the cup of woe ran over and she drank of the draught! They told her all before she had been five minutes in the room. How else could they account for their tears, their confusion, their bewilderment, their despair!

Before Herbert’s funeral took place, Emily Lovell was lying betwixt life and death in a brain fever. Under the influence of a feeling easily to be comprehended, thirsting for a self-imposed torture, that by its very poignancy should relieve the dead weight of wretchedness that lay upon his breast, Charles crept from his bed, and slipping on a loose coat that hung in his room, he stole across the garden to the tower, whence, through the arrow-slit, he witnessed the burial of his sister’s lover, whom he had hastened to the grave.

Here terminates our sad story. We left T—— on the following morning, and it was two or three years before any further intelligence of the Lovell family reached us. All we then heard was, that Charles had gone, a self-condemned exile, to Australia; and that Emily had insisted on accompanying him thither.

DREAM WITHIN DREAM; OR, EVIL MINIMISED.

What evil would be, could it be, the Blest
Are sometimes fain to know. They sink to rest,
Dream, for one moment’s space, of care and strife,
Wake, stare, and smile; and this is Human Life.

THE SCHOOLMASTER AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which still exists among the humbler classes of this nation, is never so darkly apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people of similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England stands the lowest in the scale of what truly must be looked upon as _Civilisation_; for she provides fewer means for promoting it than any of her neighbours. With us, education is a commodity to be trafficked in: abroad, it is a duty. Here, schoolmasters are perfectly irresponsible except to their paymasters: in other countries, teachers are appointed by the state, and a rigid supervision is maintained over the trainers of youth, both as regards competency and moral conduct. In England, whoever is too poor to buy the article education, can get none of it for himself or his offspring: in other parts of Europe, either the government (as in Germany), or public opinion (as in America), enforces it upon the youthful population.

What are the consequences? One is revealed by a comparison between the proportion of scholars in elementary schools to the entire population of other countries, and that in our own. Taking the whole of northern Europe—including Scotland—and France and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we find that to every 2¼ of the population, there is one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such pupil to every _fourteen_ inhabitants.

It has been calculated that there are, at the present day in England and Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write—that is to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements—compiled by Mr. Kay, from official and other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the _experimentum crucis_ of ‘his mark.’ The number of petty jurors—in rural districts especially—who can only sign with a cross is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only ‘men of mark,’ but men of substance. We have printed already specimens of the partial ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen’s bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest rudiments of education in this country has fallen, are too common to bear repetition. We cannot pass through the streets, we cannot enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote—with the attestation of our own experience—the following passage from one of a series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning newspaper:—‘Taking the adult class of agricultural labourers, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and move and have their being. As they work in the fields, the external world has some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to all the higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You cannot address one of them without being at once painfully struck with the intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general neither speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance. The whole expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting, too, in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you accost him, if he is not insolent—which he seldom is—he is timid and shrinking, his whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance from you, greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is often doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him; he is seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and obviously relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can affirm them to possess as a class, after having come in contact with many hundreds of farm labourers. They belong to a generation for whose intellectual culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult peasant reading for his own or others’ amusement? The invariable answer is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place, _the great bulk of them cannot read_. In the next, a large proportion of those who can, do so with too much difficulty to admit of the exercise being an amusement to them. Again, few of those who can read with comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is but justice to them to say, that many of those who cannot read, have bitterly regretted, in my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall never forget the tone in which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me what a comfort it would now be to her, could she only read her Bible in her lonely hours.’

We now turn to the high lights of the picture as presented abroad, and which, from their very brightness, throw our own intellectual gloom into deeper shade. Mr. Kay observes in the work we have already cited—

‘It is a great fact, however much we may be inclined to doubt it, that throughout Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, and the Austrian Empire, all the children are actually at this present time attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious, moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient teachers. Over the vast tract of country which I have mentioned, as well as in Holland, and the greater part of France, _all_ the children above six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits under the _influence_ of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of twenty-one years, can read, write, and cypher, and know the Bible History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle and dirty in the streets of the towns—there is no class of children to be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our “ragged schools”——all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners, as polished and civilised as the children of our middle classes; the children of the poor in Germany are so civilised that the rich often send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly, in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are receiving a _better_ education than that given in England to the children of the greater part of our middle classes.’

‘I remember one day,’ says Mr. Kay in another page, ‘when walking near Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg’s Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up, in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out to me and said, “Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the neighbourhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of Sir Walter Scott’s Novels, and many of the interesting works of your language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.” This account was afterwards confirmed by the testimony of several other persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin, while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books, which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours. In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they practise singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has been brought up under this system, _i. e._ of any of the poor who have not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of our own peasantry. The German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak, clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education than themselves. They do not appear embarrassed, still less do they appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country, raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones, “I pray you, Sir, be covered.” A Prussian peasant is always polite and respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking to one of his own fellows.’

Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster abroad and his inactivity at home—refuting, as it does, our hourly boastings of ‘intellectual progress,’—should arouse us, energetically and practically, to the work of Educational extension.

THE LADY ALICE.