"If I stopped in this hole of a room long, I should heave my heart out." "There's no drainage, sir, to the place; there's nothing that there ought to be; and the stench naturally strikes on them not accustomed to it. At times it's hardly to be borne by us who live in it." "I should think not. How you, an evidently intelligent and decent man, can live in it, is to me a mystery." 66 "What else am I to do, sir?" returned Sale, with the subdued accent he mostly spoke in. There's nothing better to be had at the price I can afford to pay. I wish there was. The greater part of us that live in these places don't do it by choice, but because we can't help ourselves. Some don't care; they'd pig on contentedly to their lives' end; but most of us would like to do better. There's no chance for us: there's no decent dwellings to be had for the very poor." The doctor could not gainsay this if Sale insisted on it, though he had a combative temper. Sale continued: "It's growing worse every day, more difficult to get a lodging. What with so many of the old houses being pulled down for what they call improvements and for railways, and what with the increase of population, we shall soon have no homes at all." "I'd go out and encamp in the fields; I'd lay under the arches of the bridges; I'd walk the streets all night, rather than drug myself to death in this tainted atmosphere!" cried the surgeon, speaking as if he were in a passion. 66 'No, sir, you wouldn't. It's easy enough to think this and that, but it's not easy to do it. A room, let it be as bad as it will, as bad as this, is a home, and open fields and bridges are not. Sir, believe me, we can't help ourselves: as long as there's no better places for us, we must put up with these." "It will kill some of you. It will sap away your health and strength; and your life after it." "Yes, sir; I dare say." Mr. Whatley wondered what sort of man he had got hold of: the tone of voice was so quiet and resigned. Almost as if he took these grievances as a matter of course, against which he and the rest of the world were helpless. It was but a natural result of the state of things. "You have been better off, have you not?" cried the surgeon. "Not for this four or five years. I was a good workman once, earning my thirty-five shillings a week. I went in for respectability then, for improvement clubs, reading-rooms, and the like: my father was a printer in the country, and we had good schooling and training; which gave me a taste for such things. But I got rheumatic fever above five years ago, and was laid up for many months.' "And then?" "It left my hands partly crippled, sir: in some weathers they're nearly useless still. I've had to do what I can since then; pick up odd jobs and live any way. Sometimes I get a job at Covent Garden Market: or hawk things about the streets when I've money to buy them first. I don't complain, sir; there's some worse off than me." It's never out of it, sir; one sort or another. Never, at any rate, out of the locality.' "Just so. But this child's has been nothing but the chronic inward fever induced by the tainted atmosphere. It has nearly left him now. "Will he get well, sir?" Mr. Whatley knew that, far from getting well, the little life was at its close. It was one of those cases where the end comes so gradually, without adequate apparent cause, as to be unsuspected by ordinary observers. Sale waited for the answer, his lips slightly parted. "Would you rather hear the truth?" asked the plain-speaking doctor. There was a minute's silence. "Well-yes. Yes, sir." "I am sorry to have to tell it you. You seem to value him-and that's what can't be said, I'll wager, of all the fathers in this place. He will not get well." "But what's killing him?" cried Sale, with a pause and a sort of breath-catching. "I tell you: the foul air he has breathed. It must and does affect children, and this one -as I can see at a glance-had not sufficient natural strength to throw off the poison." "And he'll not get well!" repeated the father, who seemed to be unable to take in the fact. "Jenny says so too. She says I'm going to heaven." The interruption, quiet as it was, came on them with a start, and they both turned sharply. The child was lying, with his eyes wide open, his blue bell in his hand; perhaps had been awake all along. Mr. Whatley bent down to the bed, and Sale held the candle. "Who is Jenny, my little fellow?" asked he, all his roughness of manner gone, and touching the child as tenderly, speaking as gently, as if he had been lying in a satin cradle. “She's the Bible-woman, sir,” answered the boy, who had caught his father's correct diction. "She comes because I'm by myself all day, and reads to me and tells me pretty stories." "Stories, eh. About Jack the Giant-killer?" "No, sir. About heaven." Mr. Whatley rose. He took a small white paper from his pocket, shot some powder from it into a tea cup, and asked for fresh water-if there was such a thing. Sale brought some, which the doctor smelt and made a face over; and he put it to the powder and gave it the child to drink. "He won't eat his food, sir," observed Sale. "I dare say not. He's getting beyond it.' The boy held up the flower. "When Jenny gave me this, she said there'd be prettier bluebells in heaven." Sale seemed to want to say something. "I've not got the money to pay you now, sir. I'll bring it to you, if you'll please to trust me, the very first I get.' And the young man, who was a quick reader of his fellow-men, knew that it would be brought, though Sale starved himself to save it. 66 All right," he nodded, "it won't be much. Look here, my man," he stopped to say, willing to administer a grain of comfort in his plain way, "if it were my child, I should welcome the change. He'll have a better home than this." Sale went in again; to the stifling atmosphere and the dirty walls, in the midst of which the child was dying so peacefully. The boy did not seem inclined to sleep now; he lay in bed talking, a dull glazed light in the once feverish eyes. Sale drew the three-legged stool close, and sat down upon it. The lad | put his hand into his father's, and the trifling action upset Sale's equanimity, who had been battling in silence with his shock of grief. Very much to his own discomfiture, he burst into tears; and he had not done it when his wife died. "Don't cry, da. Is it for me?" "It seems hard, Charley," he sobbed. "The three rest all taken, and now you; and me to be left alone!" "You'll come next, da. Jenny says so. It's such a beautiful land; music and flowers and sweet fresh air. Mother's there, and Bessy and Jane; Jesus took them home to it because it was better than this, and he's coming for Jenny has told it me all." me. Sale made no reply. He saw how it was— that others had discerned what he had not: the sure approach of death-and the good Biblewoman had been at her work preparing, soothing, reconciling even this little child. But it did seem very hard to the father. "If I could have kept you all in a wholesome lodging, Charley, the illness might't have come on: on you or on them. God knows how I've strove to do my best. Things be against us poor, and that's a fact; these horrible tumble-down kennels be against us." "Never mine, da: it'll be better in heaven." Ah yes! yes, it will be better in heaven. And may God sustain all these unaided ones with that sure and certain hope as they struggle The boy slept at length; but he started continually; sometimes waking up and asking for water, sometimes rambling in speech. Sale sat and watched him through the night, he and his heavy heart. on. You may be sure that the dawn could not penetrate quickly into that close place, shut in from the open light and air. It was candlelight there, but getting bright outside, when the boy started up, a gray look on his wan face, never before seen there. "What is it, Charley? Water?" The child looked about him as if bewildered; then he caught up the blue-bell that lay still at hand, and held it out to his father. "Take it, da. I can see the others up there. They are better than this." He lay down again, his little face to the wall, and was very still. So still that Sale hushed his own breath, lest he should disturb him. The sounds of the day were commencing outside: two women had already pitched upon some point of dispute, and were shrieking at each other with shrill voices. By-and-by Sale leaned over to look at the still face, and saw what had happened-that it was still for ever! He went out later with his basket of roots. It is not for the poor to indulge grief in idleness; death or no death indoors, money must be earned. The world was as busy as though no little child, free from want now, had just been laid to rest; people jostled each other on the pavements; and the sun shone down, direct and hot, from the clear blue sky. As Richard Sale looked up, he wondered how long it might be before God removed him to the same bright world: and he took his stand meekly in a convenient spot for the sale of the flowers. II. FEAR OF DEATH. Since nature's works be good, and death doth serve SIX SONNETS. [I. William Dunbar, born 1460, died 1520. He was a Scottish poet, but there is little known as to the events of his life. He commemorated the marriage of James IV. with Margaret Tudor in The Thistle and Rose; and received a yearly pension of £10, which was afterwards increased. II. Sir Philip Sidney, born in Penshurst, Kent, 29th November, 1554; died in Arnheim, 7th October, 1586. A soldier, courtier, and poet, and eminent in the three characters He was the author of the Arcadia, and the Defence of Poesie. The nobility of his nature is best illustrated by the anecdote related by Lord Brooke. He was governor of Flushing during the war between the Spaniards and the Hollanders. Wounded in one of the battles, he was leaving the field faint and bleeding when he was attracted by the cries of a dying soldier who craved water. Sidney gave the man his own supply, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine." IV. John Milton, born in Bread Street, London, 9th December, 1608; diel 8th November, 1674. Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, and the author, it is said. received £10 for his work. He became blind about the year 1654. Whilst his poems are to be found in almost every household it is to be regretted that his prose works are seldom read. He published a History of England in 1670.] I. TO A LADYE. Sweit rois of vertew and of gentilness; WILLIAM DUNBAR. III. DEGENERACY OF THE WORLD. What hapless hap had 1 for to be born In these unhappy Times and dying days Of this now doating World, when Good decays, Love's quite extinct and Virtue's held a scorr ! When such are only prized, by w.etched ways, Who with a golden fleece them can adorn; When avarice and lust are counted praise, And bravest minds five orphan-like forlorn! Why was not I born in that golden age When gold was not yet known? and those black arts By which base worldlings vilely play their parts, With horrid acts staining Earth's stately stage? To have been then, O Heaven; 't had been my bliss, But bless me now, and take me soon from this. DRUMMOND of Hawthornden. IV. TO MR. LAWRENCE. Lawrence, of virtuons father virtuous son, V. WORLDLINESS. JOHN MILTON The world is too much with us!-late and soon, Those clouds that will be weeping at all hours, VI. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. With his delights; for when tired out with fan His wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills JOHN KEATS. FACT AND FICTION. "HERE BE TRUTHS." "When the heathen philosopher had a mind to eat a grape, he would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning, thereby, that grapes were made to eat, and lips to open." These are "Facts;" and as such are detailed by Monsieur Touchstone the clown, "a great lover of the same." "Shepherd," quoth he, "learn of me: To have is to have;" another sage maxim, and much acted upon in these enlightened times. Touchstone's relish, however, for "matter of fact" is but the substratum of a vein of humour which puts him a little out of the pale of your true and veritable matter-of-fact people. They-God help them! don't understand jokes. They would no more think of disguising a fact under a covering of fun, than an unsophisticated Costar Pearmain or Tummas Apple-tree would of metamorphosing a piece of fat bacon into a sandwich. They deal in simples, and love what's what for its own sake, as a patron of the "pure disinterestedness" system does virtue. In their vocabulary "whatever is, is right." "Quicquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli," might be their motto. They are of Sir Isaac Newton's opinion, who thought all poetry only "ingen ious nonsense." They ask, with the professor of the mathematics who read Homer, "What does the Iliad prove?" They are the precise antipodes to the lady who doated on Plutarch's Lives until she unluckily discovered, that, instead of being romances, they were all true. With the Irish bishop, they think Gulliver's Travels a pack of improbable lies, and won't believe a word of them! Some of their favourite authors are David Hume, Sir Nathanael Wraxall, Pepys, Sir John Carr, Bubb Doddington, Sir John Mandeville, and John Wesley. While they eschew, as downright fables, the Waverley Novels, The History of John Bull, Robinson Crusoe, The Annals of the Parish, Sinbad the Sailor, Adam Blair, and Humphrey Clinker. If they meet with a book that is dull, "it is useful, for it contains matter-of-fact. If they happen to meet with one that is not dull, they say the same thing. They never for a moment, as other worthies sometimes do, mistake their imagination for their memory; for which there is perhaps a sufficient reason, "if philosophy could find it out." In short, all imaginative literature they call "light reading;" at the same time they are unaccountably shy of calling their own peculiar favourites heavy, which is odd enough, considering that they seem to estimate usefulness (upon which they lay mighty stress) a good deal by weight, and prefer, as in duty bound, "a pound of lead to a pound of feathers." They are most gravelled by the metaphysics, of which they are rather at a loss what to make. They contrive, however, to avoid studying them as being something "not tangible." To conclude-they write themselves under the style and title of " 'Lovers of Fact," and are yclept "matter-of-fact people" by the rest of Europe. That "Facts are chiels wha winna ding, An' downa be disputed," is a truth which Burns has, after his own manner, long ago asserted, and which will not be readily controverted. But still this is no more a reason for loving them, than it is for a henpecked husband to love his better-half, because he dare not contradict her. "Facts are indisputable things," quoth Doctor Dryasdust. Very true; but so much the worse; for, in that case, there is an end of the conversation. Rosalind knew better when she recommended "kissing" as "the cleanliest shift for a lover lacking matter;" for if it be resisted, argues she, "this breeds more matter"—a result the very reverse of the doctor's definition. It is a strange thing, but in all ages divers potent, grave, and reverend signors seem to sible. The wildest inventions are only partial departures from the order of nature. But to nature they always look back, and must ultimately be referred. They are no more independent of her, than a balloon is of the earth, although it may mount for a while above its surface. The connection between them may not be so obvious, but it is no less certain. Fact, then, is the primary substratum-the primitive granite-upon which all Fiction is formed. And this being so, Fiction has always more or less of the advantages of truth, besides superadded advantages peculiar to itself. In its employment we have this privilege. can, at will, produce such a concatenation of supposed and yet natural events, as may be We have got it into their heads that "a fact," as they call it, has a sort of intrinsic value, as a fact, per se. They attach a mystical and peculiar value to it, as mortals (before the new birth of the political economists) used to do to gold, without reference to its uses, its origin, or its adjuncts. Adam Smith and Peter Macculloch have put the gold-doctrine to flight; but the other, its twin brother, remains there still, "unbated and envenomed." "Facts," say they triumphantly, "are true; now Fiction is untrue." Very well, doctor; and suppose it were the reverse. Suppose the " Fact" was untrue and the Fiction true-what then? This is a sort of query that sometimes makes a man's head spin like a teetotum; and what an effect were this to befall a head that never spun any-requisite to bring about the effect, and teach thing but almanacks during life? "Tilly Vally!"-The value of a Fact lies not in its being what it is, but in the effect it produces. A historical series is valuable, not because it is true, but because, being true, it, in consequence, produces certain effects upon the human mind. Could that same effect be produced by a fictitious narrative, it would be just as good. The same effect cannot be so produced, to be sure; and what does this prove? It proves that truth is capable of producing certain effects, of which fiction is incapable. This is all very well; but it happens to be true also of fiction, and to a much greater extent. This is no joke; but of it more by-and-by. If we take a series of historical or other truths, its value seems to lie in this, that, being true, it forms, as it were, an extended experience. It serves as a rule of action for those who read it. To do this, the truth of the series is no doubt absolutely necessary. It is essential to the process. But it is in the effect upon the mind that the value' really resides; and the truth of the record is only one aid, amongst others, to the production of that end. The sagacious personages who are, for the most part, accustomed to dogmatize upon this subject, take it broadly for granted that Fiction is something directly the opposite of Fact. They make them out at once to be as light and darkness, virtue and vice, or heat and cold. This is short-sighted work. There are no fictions absolute. None which do not in their essence partake of Fact. For all Fiction is, and must be, more or less, built upon nature. Nor have the most extravagant any very distant resemblance to it. We can only combine. It is beyond the power of man to invent anything which shall have no smack and admixture of reality throughout its whole. If it were possible, it would be incomprehen the lesson we wish. We can always do poetical justice. We need never want an instructive catastrophe. We escape that want of result to which accidental series are so liable; nor do we bring it about, as sometimes it happens in real life, through an unworthy instrument. The murderer who escapes at Newgate is punished upon the stage. Historical ruffians become heroes in an epic; and love, sometimes selfish in its origin, is ever pure in its poetry. The effect arising out of a good tragic or epic poem springs from the same principle as if it were from history. The experience we derive from it, though nominally artificial, is essentially, and to all intents, real. Fiction only enables us to render the effect more direct and complete than events might have done. We conduct the lightning where we want it; but it is not the less lightning. The "vantage-ground" gained by this faculty is unquestionably enormous. We can not only command the sequence of incident and the tides of passion, but we can exhibit them again and again, as often as we please. A century might have elapsed before the gradual progress of wickedness, and the torments of guilty ambition, were exhibited as fully and as much to the life, as they are in Macbeth and Richard. A million of Italian intrigues might have been concocted and enacted, before treachery and jealousy were so completely anatomized as in Othello. But this is not all. In real life, be the series of events what they will, they are rarely manifested to any in their completeness. Dark deeds and intricacies of passion have few witnesses; and even these seldom witness the entire detail. They are only seen in their integrity in newspaper narratives and judicial reports; and then the passions of the actors are buried and lost in the verbiage of an editor or the dry technicality of legal inquiry. Now, in a theatre, |