nutely the provision that shall be made for the tramp and the wayfarer:

In regard to poor people who are received late at night and go forth early in the morning, let the warden take care that their feet are washed, and, as far as possible, their necessities attended to.

It was a casual ward without the stone-heap. Discipline there was, but it was commonly that of the fraternity, one might almost say of the club. The consent of the Colchester lepers, for example, was necessary before a new member could be admitted. Sometimes, indeed, as in the Bristol sailors' home, the organization was that of a benefit society, to whose privileges only members who had contributed for seven years were admitted. The "cases" became brothers and sisters of the foundation, and the whole spirit of its rule of life was that of a preparation of the broken in this life for a better world. The material conditions of existence in these hospitals must have varied enormously. But in one case there is a record of meat three times a week, of vegetables in abundance, and of the glorious allowance of one gallon of beer a day. The older and wealthier foundations paraded a certain pomp and grace of architecture. Their chapels, in which all but the bed-ridden were expected to keep the canonical hours, are sometimes perfect and even elaborate specimens of the style in which they are built. The hospital itself was built sometimes with tenements, sometimes with cubicles, and sometimes with dormitories. But there was always a great refectory with a vast inglenook which was the centre of the fraternal life of the place. In some of the larger hospitals there were elaborate preparations to facilitate the cleanliness of the inmates, from weekly baths to weekly visits of the barber, and the

were

phrases in which the rules drafted, suggest rather the hospital provision of comforts than the penal discipline of a modern workhouse. There are details, moreover, which prove that over some of these 'spitals there brooded a spirit of more than apostolic charity. The statutes of Chichester, for example, provide that "if a brother under the instigation of the devil fall into immorality out of which scandal arises, or if he strike or wound the brethren," he must be expelled if incorrigible. "But let this be done, not with cruelty and tempest of words, but with gentleness and compassion." One might in this strain fill a volume with praises of the generosity of pious donors, and sketches of the gentleness and goodwill that reigned in these medieval "God's Houses," in the manner of a sunset picture by Fred Walker.

But were the Middle Ages really charitable and humane? There is much in Miss Clay's records which suggests a less comfortable judgment. The real test of the charity of the Middle Ages was the leper. History loves to record the exceptional tales of love and heroism which grow frequent in the twelfth century. Queen Maud would kiss the diseased feet of the most loathsome lepers, declaring that in so doing she touched the feet of the Eternal King. There was a Bishop of Lincoln who acted in the same spirit, and the greatest of all the leaders in this movement was St. Francis. But such sacrifices suggest to our mind rather a conscious and passionate protest against the brutality of the rest of the world, than a natural expression of pity. While a few saints acted thus, the general attitude was one of angry loathing which passed easily into active cruelty. Miss Clay surmisesand the evidence is pretty clear-that the instinct which shunned and segregated the leper was aesthetic rather

All

than hygienic. Men were not yet afraid of infection or contagion. They hated the sight of a hideous affliction. Hating first, they came to fear. France could become convulsed over a legendary conspiracy between the lepers, the Jews, and the Saracens to poison the wells. That panic set men burning lepers alive by the score, and not in France alone. The natural sentiment of the Middle Ages was even to think of lepers as the enemies of the human race. They were suspected, after the peril of infection began to be realized, of a malicious desire to revenge themselves on fortune by deliberately infecting as many of their fellows as they could. London, indeed, kept three lazar-houses. But one reads that it also maintained two officers whose sole duty it was to make a daily round of these hospitals to flog the lepers for any contumacy which they might have committed. The main impression one derives is almost of a war between the sick and the whole, in which, indeed, it may well have happened that these outcasts became actual outlaws and combined for defence or revenge. The teaching of the Church was officially condensed in a precept which bade lepers "to bear themselves as more despised and more humble than the rest of their fellowmen." Nor can one conceive a more cruel form than the office by which the Church expelled the certified leper from the congregation of the living. It was a symbolical burial service. The leper lay in the posture of a corpse on the floor of the church, and rose up only that the priest might sprinkle with a spade three handfuls of earth upon his feet. It was a childish world which could devise a mummery so brutal and ghastly as this, and one suspects that it really regarded the leper much as children in a City slum to-day regard a broken and half-witted hunchback, whom they alternately tor

ment and flee. Nor was the imposing mechanism of charity which endowed the hospitals altogether disinterested. In the later centuries their funds were mainly provided by the sale of pardons. They were largely used by the rich and powerful. Edward I. filled the almshouses with the aged servants of the Court. Nobles and princes quartered their retainers on them when they travelled. It sometimes happened that the wardens were detected in filling them with "paying guests." The brethren who served and controlled the hospitals were vowed to poverty and the renunciation of all their goods. But when one finds in the statutes of a hospital the terrible provision that a brother detected in leaving property at his death shall be "cast out from Christian burial," the inference is not that poverty was an ideal willingly embraced. that it was an ideal which pious founders almost despaired of enforcing.

It is rather

It is difficult to believe that the brotherly pity of the Middle Ages can ever have been a habit generally observed. It is certain that scarcely a memory of it remained when the Reformation arrived. We read no more of the provision of shelter and water for wayfaring men. Instead, the vagrant is lashed by statute from town to town. Under Edward VI. he is even converted into a chattel slave, with a ring round his neck and a brand upon his skin. The destruction of the hos pitals accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries. It was not, indeed. complete, for some of the most venerable foundations, like Saint Cross at Winchester, survive to this day. But no hospital attached to a monastery was spared, and of the rest the greater number perished. St. James's Palace was built on the site of a 'spital for women. The Savoy, but newly built, was turned from its purpose. The

City of London was fain to buy back Bedlam after the Crown had confiscated it, and to endow St. Bartholomew's after Henry VIII. had closed it. Yet there can never have been a time when England stood in greater need of charity. One reads in Brinklow's "Lamentacyon of a Christian agaynst the Cytye of London" (1545), how

London being one of the flowers of the worlde, as touchinge worldlye riches, hath so manye, yea innumerable of poore people forced to go from dore to dore and dye for lacke

of ayde of the riche. The Crown did well out of this spoliation. The gentry did better. The Dukes of that day no doubt had their

The Nation.

excuses. They annexed the dissolute monasteries that they might have the wherewithal to give and to employ. The Reformation was not always so ruthless. One might suppose from Franz Hals's canvases that half the respectable matrons of Holland were engaged in managing the orphan hospitals. But in England, because the basis of conviction was weaker, it was important that the economic foundation should be stronger. Our Protestant nobility defended the faith because it was also defending its hearths and homes. It made an end of medieval charity. But it entrenched the Thirty-Nine articles on its whilom abbey lands.

I.

The morning grayness still hung over the long stretch of wharf where the autumn catches of herrings are landed. Generally, there are two or three hundrd boats "up" at this period of the year, lying nose on to the quay-heading. But it had been a curious fishing; and now, right in the middle of the drifting season, the quays were empty, and the low-roofed market-shed which extends for half a mile along the river's edge was silent. There were a few buyers loitering on the granite setts of the wharf; and a knot of "tellers," whose duty it is to count the catches, were gazing down at the green water of the flowing haven.

At length, from below the whitewashed petroleum store, there appeared the familiar brown sails of a fishing lugger. As the boat glided up stream the little knot on the quay drew together and discussed her.

"She's got a few, anyhow," said one of the tellers. "She's a bit low in the water with it too."

"Look like the Three Sisters, don't she?" suggested another wharf-hand. "Yis, that's the Three Sisters. 1 know her by that there patch in the foot of the fore-sail. Ole Joe Benson's boat she is, and a very unlucky boat she is too."

"What's that flag a-doin' in the riggin', then?" said another teller. "Blow'd if it ain't half-mast!"

"So 'tis! So 'tis!" was repeated among the group, which had now been increased by the buyers on the wharf. The boat, scarcely three furlongs distant now, came gliding on with a faint blue curl of smoke from her cabin stove-pipe. She was very low in the water; freeboard and deck glistened with a coating of fresh scales; and the beam wind flogged a flag against the mainsail. The picture had all the elements of a North Sea tragedy: gray morning with a keenness moving in the air; a deserted wharf, looking desolate in what should have been the busy season; and the solitary boat sliding up to her moorings, with the signal

of death in the rigging and a full catch in her hold. Both fatalities and full catches had been unusual during the season, and the group at the quay looked long and anxiously at the crew busied on the lifting deck of the lugger.

"There's Geordie Spratley, and Bob Aldred, and Harry Sillick," said a wharf-hand, who appeared to know everyone on the drifter. "There's the cook, and Ben Ford, and Jimmy Green."

"They're all there, then," remarked one of the salesmen, a Mr. Cufande. "Perhaps they've picked someone up." "Where's the boy?" asked another

voice.

"What, the boy 'Arbart? He's there. He look precious sick too. It's his first trip."

"I don't see old Joe," said Mr. Cufande as the boat ran gently up to her berth, and two or three of the crew dropped rope fenders over the bulwarks to take the impact. "Who is it, George?" he asked of Spratley, the mate, who was leaning brokenly on the hood of the after-hatch.

"It's the ole man," replied the mate listlessly. "He went out last night.

We've got fifteen last o' good stuff. If you'll sell 'em in the boat, Mr. Cufande, we'll get him ashore then." The mate jerked a grimy hand towards the cabin-hatch.

Mr. Cufande, a white-haired, cleanshaven gentleman of sturdy build but low stature, beckoned his clerk to him from the office-door at the back of the fish-wharf, and after a short conversation the young fellow fetched out his cycle and rode off.

There was no need to ring the bell for buyers that morning. For weeks there had been an unprecedented Idearth of herrings, and when a few samples had been tossed up from the wings of the hold of the Three Sisters. the buyers assembled knew that the

catch was as the mate described it, "Fresh last night, and good quality right through." Bidding was brisk, though quiet. There was an absence of the usual wharf jokes, and the catch of fifteen lasts was sold in the boat. Within five minutes of the commencement of the bidding Mr. Cufande had replaced the ivory-headed pencil in his note-book with the buyers' names entered. The fish had fetched an average price of twenty-five pounds per last.

By this time the salesman's clerk had brought Mrs. Benson, the master's wife, to the wharf in a cab. She was sobbing hysterically on the granite edging of the wharf, and kept crying that she had come for "her man." A swathed form was carried up from the cabin and laid upon the after-deck. No one knew how the master's widow clambered down to the deck, but she was there bending over the corpse, repeating dully, "Say something to me, Joe. Speak to me, Joe!" Gently Mr. Cufande took her arm and helped her up to the quay again. Then the master's body was removed to one of the offices on the wharf till suitable means could be found to convey it home. The fishermen and buyers were winking away tears from brine-reddened eyes. But immediately the master's body had been carried ashore, the crew were at work unloading the catch and "telling" it. The great swills of five hundred herrings were lifted up on to the wharf by short ropes with hooks at the ends. The work was carried on far more silently than usual; the wooden spades seemed to crunch more than common as the herrings were scooped on deck; and the few silver fish which slid back into the wings by chance fell audibly upon the rest of the catch below.

The mate was watching the men listlessly, when Mr. Cufande caught his eye, and, stepping across to him,

said, "Tell me how it happened, George. It'll do you good. Besides, I shall have to tell her." And he motioned with his hand towards the office on the wharf where the widow was watching her dead.

II.

George Spratley and the salesman climbed down into the dark, stuffy cabin. The fisherman avoided the starboard bench, and motioned the other to sit beside him. Then he bent his head over his knees and cried.

"There ain't nothin' to cry for," he said presently. "I don't know why I'm a-doin' of it, 'cause a man couldn't hev gone out better'n poor old Joe. But I'm kind of upset."

The salesman said nothing, but nodded his sympathy with a hoarse cough in his throat.

"Do you believe in spirits?" the mate went on. "'Cause But I'll tell 'ee just how it happened." He paused as if to collect his thoughts, and then resumed. "You know, because you hev allus sold our catches, Mr. Cufande you know that the Three Sisters hev been doin' very badly t'year." The salesman nodded. "Yis, the luck hev been agin us this season. Ole Joe never was what you'd call fortnit, and up to this trip he'd only paid his way. You see, the boat was his, and he was gettin' on in years. Well, all this season he hev been feelin' that somehow or other he'd go out, and his health was bad. We went out over the bar last Thursday; that's five days yesterday we'd been out, and we couldn't fall in with the fish nohow. You know old Joe was one of the best that ever took to the driftin'." The mate paused again and furtively wiped his eyes. His hearer made no com

ment.

"Yis, ole Joe had got what you could call religion. He warn't no rantin' Methody, but he believed.

LIVING AGE. VOL. XLVI. 2392

What was worryin' of him was that, if he went off, the ole lady would be left without anything 'cept what the boat would fetch, and that ain't a sight. Well, last night I was on deck akeepin' the sailin'-watch. It was a quiet night, the moon was just h'isted over the water, and it was pritty nigh as clear as day. Ole Joe hadn't been feelin' hisself, so I was surprised to see him on deck."

"Couldn't sleep, perhaps," suggested Mr. Cufande.

"No, it warn't that. He did look ghastly too when he got the moon fair on his face. He didn't look onquiet, only quair and funny." The mate gesticulated helplessly with his hands to indicate his want of power to describe the skipper's appearance. "I axed him what he come up for, and he said, 'I've had a dream, George. and it's been told me that I'm going out this trip.'"

"Did he say that, George?" said the salesman, looking round uneasily.

"'Strue's I'm here, he said that, Mr. Cufande. Well, I said, 'Look here, Joe, you're outer sorts, but you'll hold togither a mort of years yet.' He said, 'No, George; I'm goin' out this trip,' and he said it slow and solemn like, ezackly like a man what had got a message. Then he said. 'I'm goin' to say a prayer, George.'

"The chaps in the sailin'-watch had got round, and Bob Aldred, one of the capstan-hands, giggled. The skipper jest looked at Bob in his quiet way, and Bob didn't giggle no more. said to-day that he felt as if he was lookin' at a dead man.

He

"But ole Joe, he left me at the wheel where I was steerin', and he took off his sou'-wester at the scuddin'-poleyou know, where the pole goes over the hold."

Mr. Cufande nodded curtly.

"Well, every one of the sailin'-watch took off his hat, and the skipper