Chapter II: Part 2

Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done, claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward appearance for it is a long low building, scarcely seen beyond its own boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment need be felt, then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings running east and west, with slits in the roof, and in some of the walls. Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and finish—beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfil, and in perfect order. They are fixed on solid piers of masonry, deeply imbedded in the earth, to secure freedom from vibration—a quality better obtained when the foundations are on sand or gravel than when on rock.

To describe the instruments by their technical names, and to go into any particulars of the instruments they have superseded, would take space, only to do the work of a scientific treatise. Enough, therefore, to say that there are the telescopes best adapted to the chief duty of the place, which is, watching the moon whenever she is visible; watching the _clock-stars_, by which the true time is calculated more exactly than it could be from observations of the sun alone; and watching other planetary bodies as they pass the meridian. Eclipses, occultations, and other phenomena, of course, have their share of attention, and add to the burden of the observer’s duties.

The staff of the Observatory includes a chief astronomer, Mr. Airy, with a salary of 800_l._ a year; and six assistants who are paid, 470_l._, 290_l._, 240_l._, 150_l._, 130_l._, and 130_l._, respectively. This does not include the officers of the Meteorological branch of the establishment, to be spoken of hereafter; and which consists of Mr. Glaisher, with 240_l._ a year, one assistant at 120_l._, and two additional computers. At times, when these scientific labourers have collected more observations than they are able to work out; additional help is summoned, in shape of the body of scientific clerks before spoken of; who, seated at desks, cast up the accounts the planetary bodies, including such regular old friends as the moon and fixed stars, but not forgetting those wandering celestial existences that rush, from time to time, over the meridian, and may be fairly called the chance customers of the astronomer.

Though the interior of the Observatory seems so still, the life of those employed there has its excitements. Looking through telescopes forms a small part only of their duty—and that duty cannot be done when the weather is unfavourable. On cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright weather he is busy; and a long continuance of clear days and nights gives him more employment than he can well complete. Summer, therefore, is his time of labour; winter his time of rest. It appears that in our climate the nights, on the whole, are clearer than the days, and evenings less cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes his turn as an observer, and a chain of duty is kept up night and day; at other periods, the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours at the Observatory, is between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon. During this time they work in silence, the task being to complete the records of the observations made, by filling in the requisite columns of figures upon printed forms, and then adding and subtracting them as the case requires. Whilst thus engaged, the assistant who has charge of an instrument looks, from time to time, at his star-regulated clock, and when it warns him that his expected planet is nearly due, he leaves his companions, and quietly repairs to the room where the telescope is ready. The adjustment of this has previously been arranged with the greatest nicety. The shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a moveable back. If the object he seeks is high in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till its occupant almost lies down; if the star is lower, the chair-back is raised in proportion. He has his note-book and metallic pencil in hand. Across the eye-piece of the telescope are stretched seven lines of spider-web, dividing the field of view. If his seat requires change, the least motion arranges it to his satisfaction, for it rests upon a railway of its own. Beside him is one of the star-clocks, and as the moment approaches for the appearance of the planet, the excitement of the moment increases. ‘The tremble of impatience for the entrance of the star on the field of view,’ says an Edinburgh Reviewer, ‘is like that of a sportsman whose dog has just made a full point, and who awaits the rising of the game. When a star appears, the observer, in technical language, _takes a second from the clock face_; that is, he reads the second with his eye, and counts on by the ear the succeeding beats of the clock, naming the seconds mentally. As the star passes each wire of the transit, he marks down in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil the second, _and the second only_, of his observation, with such a fraction of a second as corresponds, in his judgment, to the interval of time between the passage of the star, and the beat of the clock which preceded such passage.’

An experienced observer will never commit an error in this mental calculation, exceeding the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a minute. When the star has been thus watched over the seven cobweb lines (or wires), the observer jots down the hour and minute, in addition to the second, and the task is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is requisite to direct a ray of light from a lamp, so far to enlighten the field of the telescope, as to permit the spider lines to be seen running across the brighter ground on which the expected star is to be visible.

The adjustment of the instruments is a task of great nicety. If they are out of trim only a shadow of a shade of a hair’s-breadth, the desired accuracy is interfered with, and they have to be re-adjusted. Temperature is of course an important element in their condition, and a slight sensibility may do mischief. The warmth of the observer’s body, when approaching the instruments, has been known to affect their accuracy; and to avoid such sources of error, instruments have at times been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting powers of that homely fabric might screen the too-sensitive metal.

Sunday is a comparative holiday at the Observatory, for then, except when any extraordinary phenomena are expected, the only duty done is to drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon’s place. The moon is never neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care,—to the great service of astronomy, and the great benefit of navigation.

The library should not pass unnoticed. It is small; but being devoted to works upon astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is ample room for all that has hitherto been written on the subject, or that can, for many generations, be produced. The observations of a lifetime spent in watching the stars may be printed in marvellously few pages. A glance through the Greenwich Astronomical Library gives a rough general idea of what the world has done and is doing for the promotion of this science. Russia contributes large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of extended observations made under the munificent patronage of a despot; Germany sends from different points a variety of smaller, cheaper-looking, yet valuable contributions; France gives proofs of her genius and her discoveries; but _her_ forte is not in observation. The French are bad observers. They have no such proofs of unremitting, patient toil in search of facts, as those afforded in the records of the Greenwich Tables of the Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already said, is a working Observatory; and those who go into its library, and its fire-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and Halley, to those of our later and more liberal times, will have good reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has been well employed.

One other spot must be noticed as amongst the notable things in this astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the first three Mondays in the year, the chief watchmakers of London send in their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches remain for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by day, by two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and their instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant service; whilst others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a Brobdingnag Watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January, they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months. Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the centre of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences, they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies in a baker’s dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment. Whilst thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these triumphs of human ingenuity—so well is their mechanism ‘corrected’ for compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction induced by the cold—that an even rate of going is established, so nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter of close and certain estimate.

The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of Admiralty, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of their performances during six months of 1849, with memoranda of the exact weeks during which the chronometers were exposed to the open air at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room was heated by a stove, the chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding shelves; and the weeks during which they were placed in the tray above the stove. The rate given during the first week of trial is in every case omitted; like newly entered schoolboys their early vagaries are not taken into account; but after that, every merit and every fault is watched with jealous care, and, when the day of judgment comes, the order of the arrangement of the chronometers in the list is determined solely by consideration of their irregularities of rate as expressed in the columns, ‘Difference between greatest and least,’ and, ‘Greatest difference between one week and the next.’

The Royal Observatory, according to a superstition not wholly extinct, is the headquarters, not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology. The structure is awfully regarded, by a small section of the community which ignorance has still left amongst us, as a manufactory of horoscopes, and a repository for magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long ago a well-dressed woman called at the Observatory gate to request a hint as to the means of recovering a lost sum of money; and recently, somebody at Brighton dispatched the liberal sum of five shillings in a post-office order to the same place, with a request to have his nativity cast in return! Another, only last year, wrote as follows:—‘I have been informed that there are persons at the Observatory who will, by my enclosing a remittance and the hour of my birth, give me to understand _who is to be my wife_? An early answer, stating all particulars, will oblige,’ &c.

This sketch descriptive of its real duties and uses are not necessary to relieve the Greenwich Observatory from the charge of being an abode of sorcerers and astrologers. A few only of the most ignorant can yet entertain such notions of its character; but they are not wholly unfounded. Magicians, whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and whose _arcana_ are mathematical computations, daily foretell events in that building with unerring certainty. They pre-discover the future of the stars down to their minutest evolution and eccentricity. From data furnished from the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary prophetic Almanack from which all other almanacs are copied. It foretells to a second when and where each of the planets may be seen in the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.

In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls; the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from which their future as well as their past history may be written.

SWEDISH FOLK-SONGS.

THE DOVE ON THE LILY.
There sits a pure dove on a lily so white,
On midsummer morning:—
She sang of Christ Jesus from morning to night,
In Heaven there is great joy, O!

She sang, and she sang, ’twas a joy to hear,
Expecting a maiden in Heaven that year.

“And should I reach Heaven ere twelvemonths are o’er,
Sickness and pain I should know never more.”

To her father’s hall the maiden she went,
And through her left side a sharp pain was sent.

“Oh! make my bed, mother, in haste, mother dear,
I shall in the fields no more wander this year.”

“And speak such words, daughter, dear daughter, no more;
Thou shalt wed with a king ere twelvemonths are o’er.”

“Oh! better that I be in Heaven a bride,
Than remain on the earth amid kingly pride.

“And father, dear father, go fetch me a priest,
For I know that, ere long, death will be my guest.

“And brother, dear brother, go get me a bier;
And sister, dear sister, do thou dress my hair.”

The maiden, she died, and was laid on her bier,
And all her hand-maidens they plaited her hair.

They carried her out from her father’s hall door;
And the angels of God with lights went before.

They carried the corpse to the churchyard along,
And the angels of God went before with a song.

They buried the maiden beneath the dark sod,
On midsummer morning:—
And her coming was even well pleasing to God;
In Heaven there is great joy, O!

A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE.

A few Sundays ago, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed, though the sermon might have been much better adapted to the comprehension and to the circumstances of the hearers. The usual supplications were offered, with more than the usual significancy in such a place, for the fatherless children and widows, for all sick persons and young children, for all that were desolate and oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that were in danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the congregation were desired “for several persons in the various wards, dangerously ill;” and others who were recovering returned their thanks to Heaven.

Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and beetle-browed young men; but not many—perhaps that kind of characters kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up.

When the service was over, I walked with the humane and conscientious gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that Sunday morning, through the little world of poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls. It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand paupers, ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the pauper world, to the old man dying on his bed.

In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless women were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning—in the “Itch-Ward,” not to compromise the truth—a woman such as HOGARTH has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her gown, before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that insalubrious department—herself a pauper—flabby, raw-boned, untidy—unpromising and coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken to about the patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her dishevelled head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and letting fall abundance of great tears, that choked her utterance. What was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, “the dropped child” was dead! Oh, the child that was found in the street, and she had brought up ever since, had died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth! The dear, the pretty dear!

The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be in earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive form was neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices to thy cold form, that such as the dropped child are the angels who behold my Father’s face!

In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like, round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the monkies. “All well here? And enough to eat?” A general chattering and chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. “Oh yes gentleman! Bless you gentleman! Lord bless the parish of St. So-and-So! It feed the hungry, Sir, and give drink to the thirsty, and it warm them which is cold, so it do, and good luck to the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee gentleman!” Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at dinner. “How do _you_ get on?” “Oh pretty well Sir! We works hard, and we lives hard—like the sodgers!”

In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or eight noisy mad-women were gathered together, under the superintendence of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, of most respectable appearance, and good manners, who had been brought in from the house where she had lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose, no friends), on account of being subject to epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed under the influence of a very bad one. She was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or the same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the daily association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving her mad—which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for enquiry and redress, but she said she had already been there for some weeks.

If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate to say she would, in all probability, have been infinitely better off. Bearing in mind, in the present brief description of this walk, not only the facts already stated in this Journal, in reference to the Model Prison at Pentonville, but the general treatment of convicted prisoners under the associated silent system too, it must be once more distinctly set before the reader, that we have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper.

And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the parish of St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things to commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous and atrocious enormity committed at Tooting—an enormity which, a hundred years hence, will still be vividly remembered in the bye-ways of English life, and which has done more to engender a gloomy discontent and suspicion among many thousands of the people than all the Chartist leaders could have done in all their lives—to find the pauper children in this workhouse looking robust and well, and apparently the objects of very great care. In the Infant School—a large, light, airy room at the top of the building—the little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangey pauper rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where the dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by the time of our arrival there and the room was not yet quite re-arranged; but the boys were roaming unrestrained about a large and airy yard, as any other schoolboys might have done. Some of them had been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom wall; and if they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up for practice (as they have in the Middlesex House of Correction), it would be so much the better. At present, if a boy should feel a strong impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, he could only gratify it, I presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their aspirations after better board and lodging, by smashing as many workhouse windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.

In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers of them had been there some long time. “Are they never going away?” was the natural enquiry. “Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,” said the Wardsman, “and not fit for anything.” They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or hyænas; and made a pounce at their food when it was served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable object everyway.

Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed; groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms, waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in upstairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how—this was the scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward, there was a cat.

In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bed-ridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men, nearly the following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being immediately at hand:

“All well here?”

No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little to look at us, claps it down on his forehead again, with the palm of his hand, and goes on eating.

“All well here?” (repeated.)

No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a boiled potato, lifts his head, and stares.

“Enough to eat?”

No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.

“How are _you_ to-day?” To the last old man.

That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of a very good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always proceeds from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or spoken to.

“We are very old, Sir,” in a mild, distinct voice. “We can’t expect to be well, most of us.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“I have no complaint to make, Sir.” With a half shake of his head, a half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.

“Enough to eat?”

“Why, Sir, I have but a poor appetite,” with the same air as before; “and yet I get through my allowance very easily.”

“But,” showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; “here is a portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?”

“Oh dear no, Sir,” with the same apologetic air. “Not starve.”

“What do you want?”

“We have very little bread, Sir. It’s an exceedingly small quantity of bread.”

The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s elbow, interferes with, “It ain’t much raly, Sir. You see they’ve only six ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast, there _can_ only be a little left for night, Sir.”

Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bedclothes, as out of a grave, and looks on.

“You have tea at night?” The questioner is still addressing the well-spoken old man.

“Yes, Sir, we have tea at night.”

“And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?”

“Yes, Sir—if we can save any.”

“And you want more to eat with it?”

“Yes, Sir.” With a very anxious face.

The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little discomposed, and changes the subject.

“What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the corner?”

The nurse don’t remember what old man is referred to. There has been such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. The spectral old man who has come to life in bed, says, “Billy Stevens.” Another old man who has previously had his head in the fireplace, pipes out,

“Charley Walters.”

Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose Charley Walters had conversation in him.

“He’s dead!” says the piping old man.

Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the piping old man, and says:

“Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed, and—and—”

“Billy Stevens,” persists the spectral old man.

“No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and—and—they’re both on ’em dead—and Sam’l Bowyer;” this seems very extraordinary to him; “he went out!”

With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough of it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again, and takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him.

As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisible old man, a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had just come up through the floor.

“I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the liberty of saving a word?”

“Yes; what is it?”

“I am greatly better in my health, Sir; but what I want, to get me quite round,” with his hand on his throat, “is a little fresh air, Sir. It has always done my complaint so much good, Sir. The regular leave for going out, comes round so seldom, that if the gentlemen, next Friday, would give me leave to go out walking, now and then—for only an hour or so, Sir!—”

Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other scenes, and assure himself that there was something else on earth? Who could help wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what grasp they had on life; what crumbs of interest or occupation they could pick up from its bare board; whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the days when he kept company with some old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens ever told them of the time when he was a dweller in the far-off foreign land called Home!

The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint, and looking stedfastly at us with his bright quiet eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge of these things, and of all the tender things there are to think about, might have been in his mind—as if he thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling in the pauper nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their charges than the race of common nurses in the hospitals—as if he mused upon the Future of some older children lying around him in the same place, and thought it best, perhaps, all things considered, that he should die—as if he knew, without fear, of those many coffins, made and unmade, piled up in the store below—and of his unknown friend, “the dropped child,” calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there was something wistful and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of all the hard necessities and incongruities he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more liberty—and a little more bread.

THE “IRISH DIFFICULTY” SOLVED BY CON Mc Nale.

Con Mc Nale would have been summarily repudiated as an Irishman by our farce-writers and slashing novelists. He neither drank, fought, nor swore; did not make many blunders; and never addressed a friend either as his ‘honey’ or his ‘jewel.’ His _cotamore_ was of stout frieze, and though Con had long attained his full height, the tailor had left him room to grow. The _caubeen_ was not his head-dress, for Con had arrived at the dignity of a silk hat, which had been manufactured, as the mark in the crown declared, by the Saxons in the Borough of Southwark, which locality Con believed to be in the n_a_ighbourhood of England. The brogues were also absent, but were favourably represented by shoes of native manufacture laced with stout thongs. In fact, Mr. Mc Nale was a fine specimen of the finest _pisantry_ in the world—without the rags.

People have gone to the Highlands and to Switzerland, and perhaps seen many places not much more grand and picturesque than the district where Con Mc Nale had made a patch of the desert to smile. A long range of blue mountains rising irregularly above each other, looked down on an extensive plain, that lay along the shore of a mighty lake, to the banks of which thick plantations crowded so near that the old Irish called the water _Lough-glas_, which signifies waters of green. The districts where a short but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among the rocks, were certainly put to the use of feeding cattle, and it was while employed there as a herd-boy, that Con Mc Nale determined to become a farmer. His mind was made up. His earnings were hardly enough to keep life in him, and if he had tried to save the price of a spade out of them to begin business with, the chances are that he would have died prematurely for want of food. But that didn’t matter much; he was determined to be a farmer. This determination was then as likely of fulfilment as that of Oliver Cromwell to become Protector of the Realm, while tending the vats at Huntingdon; or that of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was a ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To show, however, what perseverance will do, when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con Mc Nale he had actually got possession of a spade, and was making good use of it in a ditch—his own ditch, on his own land. As he went on, now digging, now resting on the handle, he told me all about his gradual promotion from a herd-boy to a country jontleman.

“My father,” said he, “lived under ould Squire Kilkelly, an’ for awhile tinded his cattle: but the Squire’s gone out iv this part iv the counthry, to Australia or some furrin part, an’ the mentioned house (mansion house) an’ the fine propperty was sould, so it was, for little or nothin’, for the fightin’ was over in furrin parts; Boney was put down, an’ there was no price for corn or cattle, an’ a jontleman from Scotland came an’ bought the istate. We were warned by the new man to go, for he tuk in his own hand all the in-land about the domain, bein’ a grate farmer. He put nobody in our little place, but pulled it down, an’ he guv father a five guinea note, but my father was ould an’ not able to face the world agin, an’ he went to the town an’ tuk a room—a poor, dirty, choky place it was for him, myself, and sisther to live in. The naighbours were very kind an’ good, though. Sister Bridget got a place wid a farmer hereabouts, and I tuk the world on my own showlders. I had nothin’ at all but the rags I stud up in, an’ they were bad enuf. Poor Biddy got a shillin’ advanced iv her wages that her masther was to giv her. She guv it me, for I was bent on goin’ towards Belfast to look for work. All along the road I axed at every place; they could giv it me but to no good, except when I axed, they’d giv me a bowl iv broth, or a piece iv bacon, or an oaten bannock, so that I had my shillin’ to the fore when I got to Belfast.

“Here the heart was near lavin’ me all out intirely. I went wandtherin’ down to the quay among the ships, and what should there be but a ship goin’ to Scotland that very night, wid pigs. In throth it was fun to see the sailors at cross-purposes wid ’em, for they didn’t know the natur iv the bastes. I did. I knew how to coax ’em. I set to an’ I deludhered an’ coaxed the pigs, an’, by pullin’ them by the tail, knowing that if they took a fancy I wished to pull ’em back out of the ship, they’d run might and main into her, and so they did. Well, the sailors were mightily divarted, an’ when the pigs was aboord, I wint down to the place—an’ the short iv it is that in three days I was in Glasgow town, an’ the captain an’ the sailors subschribed up tin-shillins an’ guv it into my hand. Well, I bought a raping hook, an’ away I trudged till I got quite an’ clane into the counthry, an’ the corn was, here and there, fit to cut. At last I goes an’ ax a farmer for work. He thought I was too wake to be paid by the day, but one field havin’ one corner fit to cut, an’ the next not ready, ‘Paddy,’ says he, ‘you may begin in that corner, an’ I’ll pay yees by the work yees do,’ an’ he guv me my breakfast an’ a pint of beer. Well, I never quit that masther the whole harvest, an’ when the raping was over I had four goolden guineas to carry home, besides that I was as sthrong as a lion. Yees would wonder how glad the sailors was to see me back agin, an’ ne’er a farthin’ would they take back iv their money, but tuk me over agin to Belfast, givin’ me the hoighth of good thratemint of all kinds. I did not stay an hour in Belfast, but tuk to the road to look afther the ould man an’ little Biddy. Well, sorrows the tidins’ I got. The ould man had died, an’ the grief an’ disthress of poor little Biddy had even touched her head a little. The dacent people where she was, may the Lord reward ’em, though they found little use in her, kep her, hoping I would be able to come home an’ keep her myself, an’ so I was. I brought her away wid me, an’ the sight iv me put new life in her. I was set upon not being idle, an’ I’ll tell yees what I did next.

“When I was little _bouchaleen_ iv a boy I used to be a head on the mountain face, an’ ’twas often I sheltered myself behind them gray rocks that’s at the gable iv my house, an’ somehow it came into my head that the new Squire, being a grate man for improvin’, might let me try to brake in a bit iv land there, an’ so I goes off to him, an’ one iv the sarvints bein’ a sort iv cousin iv mine, I got to spake to the Squire, an’ behould yees he guv me lave at onst. Well, there’s no time like the prisint, an’ as I passed out iv the back yard of the mentioned (mansion) house, I sees the sawyers cutting some Norway firs that had been blown down by the storm, an’ I tells the sawyers that I had got lave to brake in a bit iv land in the mountains, an’ what would some pieces iv fir cost. They says they must see what kind of pieces they was that I wished for, an’ no sooner had I set about looking ’em through than the Squire himself comes ridin’ out of the stable-yard, an’ says he at onst, Mc Nale, says he, you may have a load iv cuttins to build your cabin, or two if you need it. ‘The Heavens be your honour’s bed,’ says I, an’ I wint off to the room where I an’ Biddy lived, not knowin’ if I was on my head or my heels. Next day, before sunrise, I was up here five miles up the face of Slieve-dan, with a spade in my fist, an’ I looked roun’ for the most shiltered spot I could sit my eyes an. Here I saw, where the house an’ yard are stan’in, a plot iv about an acre to the south iv that tall ridge of rocks, well sheltered from the blast from the north an’ from the aste, an’ it was about sunrise an’ a fine morning in October that I tuk up the first spadeful. There was a spring then drippin’ down the face iv the rocks, the same you see gushin’ through the crockery pipe in the farm-yard; an’ I saw at once that it would make the cabin completely damp, an’ the land about mighty sour an’ water-_slain_; so I determined to do what I saw done in Scotland. I sunk a deep drain right under the rock to run all along the back iv the cabin, an’ workin’ that day all alone by myself, I did a grate dale iv it. At night, it was close upon dark when I started to go home, so I hid my spade in the heath an’ trudged off. The next mornin’ I bargined with a farmer to bring me up a load iv fir cuttins from the Squire’s, an’ by the evenin’ they were thrown down within a quarter iv a mile iv my place,—for there was no road to it then, an’ I had to carry ’em myself for the remainder of the way. This occupied me till near nightfall; but I remained that night till I placed two upright posts of fir, one at each corner iv the front iv the cabin.

“I was detarmined to get the cabin finished as quickly as possible, that I might be able to live upon the spot, for much time was lost in goin’ and comin’. The next day I was up betimes, an’ finding a track iv stiff blue clay, I cut a multitude of thick square sods iv it, an’ having set up two more posts at the remainin’ two corners iv the cabin, I laid four rows iv one gable, rising it about three feet high. Havin’ laid the rows, I sharpind three or four straight pine branches, an’ druv them down through the sods into the earth, to pin the wall in its place. Next day I had a whole gable up, each three rows iv sods pinned through to the three benathe. In about eight days I had put up the four walls, makin’ a door an’ two windows; an’ now my outlay began, for I had to pay a thatcher to put on the sthraw an’ to assist me in risin’ the rafthers. In another week it was covered in, an’ it was a pride to see it with the new thatch, an’ a wicker chimbley daubed with clay, like a pallis undernathe the rock. I now got some turf that those who had cut ’em had not removed, an’ they sould ’em for a thrifle, an’ I made a grate fire an’ slept on the flure of my own house that night. Next day I got another load iv fir brought, to make the partitions in the winter, an’ in a day or two after I had got the inside so dhry that I was able to bring poor Biddy to live there for good and all. The Heavens be praised, there was not a shower iv rain fell from the time I began the cabin till I ended it, an’ when the rain did fall, not a drop came through,—all was carried off by my dhrain into the little river before yees. The moment I was settled in the house I comminced dhraining about an acre iv bog in front, an’ the very first winter I sowed a shillin’s worth of cabbidge seed, an’ sold in the spring a pound’s worth of little cabbidge plants for the gardins in the town below. When spring came—noticin’ how the early planted praties did the best, I planted my cabbidge ground with praties, an’ I had a noble crap, while the ground was next year fit for the corn. In the mane time, every winther I tuk in more and more ground, an’ in summer I cut my turf for fewel; where the cuttins could answer, in winther, for a dhrain; an’ findin’ how good the turf were, I got a little powney an’ carried ’em to the town to sell, when I was able to buy lime in exchange, an’ put it on my bog, so as to make it produce double. As things went on, I got assistance, an’ when I marrid, my wife had two cows that guv me a grate lift.

“I was always thought to be a handy boy; an’ I could do a turn of mason-work with any man not riglarly bred to it; so I took one of my loads of lime, an’ instead of puttin’ it on the land, I made it into morthar—and indeed the stones being no ways scarce, I set to an’ built a little kiln, like as I had seen down the counthry. I could then burn my own lime, an’ the limestone were near to my hand, too many iv ’em. While all this was goin’ on, I had riz an’ sould a good dale iv oats and praties, an’ every summer I found ready sale for my turf in the town from one jontleman that I always charged at an even rate, year by year. I got the help of a stout boy, a cousin iv my own, who was glad iv a shilter; an’ when the childher were ould enough, I got some young cattle that could graze upon the mountain in places where no other use could be made iv the land, and set the gossoons to herd ’em.

“There was one bit iv ground nigh han’ to the cabin, that puzzled me intirely. It was very poor and sandy, an’ little better than a rabbit burrow; an’ telling the Squire’s Scotch steward iv it, he bade me thry some flax, an’ sure enuf, so I did, an’ a fine crap iv flax I had, as you might wish to see; an’ the stame-mills being beginnin’ in the counthry at that time, I sould my flax for a very good price—my wife having dhried it, beetled it, an’ scutched it with her own two hands. I should have said before, that the Squire himself came up here with a lot iv fine ladies and jontlemen to see what I had done; an’ you never in your life seed a man so well plased as he was, an’ a Mimber of Parlimint from Scotland was with him, an’ he tould me I was a credit to ould Ireland; and sure, didn’t Father Connor read upon the papers, how he tould the whole story in the Parlimint House before all the lords an’ quality: but faix, he didn’t forgit me; for a month or two after he was here, an’ it coming on the winter, comes word for me an’ the powney to go down to the mentioned (mansion) house, for the steward wanted me; so away I wint, an’ there, shure enuf, was an illigant Scotch plough, every inch of iron, an’ a lot of young Norroway pines—the same you see shiltering the house an’ yard—an’ all was a free prisint for me from the Scotch jontleman that was the Mimber of Parliment. ’Twas that plough that did the meracles iv work hereabouts; for I often lint it to any that I knew to be a careful hand; an’ it was the manes iv havin’ the farmers all round send an’ buy ’em. At last I was able to build a brave snug house; and praised be Providence, I have never had an hour’s ill health, nor a moment’s grief, but when poor Biddy, the cratur, died from us. It is thirty years since that morning that I tuk up the first spadeful from the wild mountain side; an’ twelve acres are good labour land, an’ fifteen drained, an’ good grazin’. I have been payin’ rint twinty years, an’ am still, thank God, able to take my own part iv any day’s work,—plough, spade, or flail.”

“Have you got a lease?” said I.

“No, indeed; not a schrape of a pin; nor I never axed it. Have I not my _tinnant-rite_?”

From that subject, Mr. Mc Nale diverged slightly into politics, touching on the state of the _counthry_, and untwisting some entanglements of the ‘Irish difficulty’ that might be usefully made known in the neighbourhood of Westminster.

“Troth, Sir,” said Con, “you English are mighty grand in all your doings. You dale wholesale in all sorts iv things; good luck to you—in charity as well as in pigs, praties, an’ sich like. Well you want to improve Ireland by wholesale; you set up illigant schames for puttin’ us all to rights by the million; for clanin’ an’ dranin’ a whole province at onst; for giving labour to everybody; an’ all mighty purty on paper, with figures all as round an’ nate as copybooks, with long rigiments of O’s, after ’em. I’ve heard iv whole stacks of papers piled up an’ handsomely ticketed in tidy big offices—all ‘rules and riglations’ for labourers, which the boys can’t follow, and the inspectors can’t force. Why not,” continued Mr. Con, giving his spade a thrust into the ground that sent it up to the maker’s name, “Why not tache the boys to do as I have done?”

“But all are not so persevering, so knowing, and so fond of work as you.”

Whether Mr. Mc Nale was impressed by his own modesty, or by the force of my suggestion, I know not. But he was silent.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770; he died on the 23d of April, 1850. His life was prolonged for ten years beyond the space attributed to man by the inspired Psalmist. He lived in an age unprecedented for its social and civil revolutions; for its discoveries in science, and their practical application. He was fourteen years of age when the new North American Republic was finally recognised as one of the brotherhood of nations; he witnessed the French Revolution; the subjection of every monarchy in Europe, except England and Russia, to the absolute will of a French emperor; the instalment and evaporation of the Holy Alliance; the European war of twenty years, and the European peace of thirty-two years; one Pope carried into exile by a foreign conqueror, another driven into exile by his own subjects: and at home, the trials of Hardy and Thelwall; the Bank Restriction Act; the origination of the Bell and Lancaster systems of Education; the visit of the allied monarchs to London; the passing of Peel’s Bill; the introduction of Palmer’s mail-coaches and M‘Adam’s roads; the invention of steam navigation; the pausing of the Reform Bill; the development of the Railway system, and the Electric telegraph. He was the contemporary of Davey, Herschell, Bentham, Godwin, Malthus and Ricardo, Byron, Scott, Wilkie, Chantrey, Fox, Pitt, Canning and Brougham.

Wordsworth’s age was one of stirring events and great changes. The character of his poetry is in startling contrast to that age. It is passionless, a record of the poet’s own mind; simple and austere, emanating from his own independent thoughts and fancies; receiving little of its form and colour from external events, or the feelings and opinions of men. For eighty long years, Wordsworth would almost appear to have lived ‘_among_ men, not _of_ them;’ sympathising as little with the ephemeral pursuits of his contemporaries as the colossal Memnon does with the Copts, Turks, and Arabs who now tenant the banks of the Nile.