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Rh look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain.

When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an application to be made for the postponement of his trial until the following Sessions. It was obviously made with the assurance that he could not live so long, and was refused. The trial came on at once, and when he was put to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of it, and holding the hand that he stretched forth to me.

The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be said for him, were said—how he had taken to industrious habits, and had thriven lawfully and reputably. But, nothing could unsay the fact that he had returned, and was there in presence of the Judge and Jury. It was impossible to try him for that, and do otherwise than find him guilty.

At that time it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the passing of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence of Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty was he; seated, that he might get breath enough to keep life in him.

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the moment, down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the court, glittering in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as I again stood outside it at the corner with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty men and women; some defiant, some stricken with terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, some staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from among the women convicts, but they had been stilled, and a hush had succeeded. The sheriffs with their great chains and

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478 nosegays, other civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gallery full of people—a large theatrical audience—looked on, as the two-and-thirty and the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge addressed them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom he must single out for special address, was one who almost from his infancy had been an offender against the laws; who, after repeated imprisonments and punishments, had been at length sentenced to exile for a term of years; and who, under circumstances of great violence and daring, had made his escape and been resentenced to exile for life. That miserable man would seem for a time to have become convinced of his errors, when far removed from the scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment, yielding to those propensities and passions, the indulgence of which had so long rendered him a scourge to society, he had quitted his haven of rest and repentance, and had come back to the country where he was proscribed. Being here presently denounced, he had for a time succeeded in evading the officers of Justice, but being at length seized while in the act of flight, he had resisted them, and had—he best knew whether by express design, or in the blindness of his hardihood—caused the death of his denouncer, to whom his whole career was known. The appointed punishment for his return to the land that had cast him out being Death, and his case being this aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die.

The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad shaft of light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge, linking both together, and perhaps reminding some among the audience, how both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the greater Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of face in this ray of light, the prisoner said, "My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat down again. There was some hushing, and the Judge

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Rh went on with what he had to say to the rest. Then, they were all formally doomed, and some of them were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or three shook hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of all, because of having to be helped from his chair and to go very slowly; and he held my hand while all the others were removed, and while the audience got up (putting their dresses right, as they might at church or elsewhere) and pointed down at this criminal or at that, and most of all at him and me.

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the Recorder's Report was made, but, in the dread of his lingering on, I began that night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of State, setting forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he had come back for my sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically as I could, and when I had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out other petitions to such men in authority as I hoped were the most merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. For several days and nights after he was sentenced I took no rest, except when I fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed in these appeals. And after I had sent them in, I could not keep away from the places where they were, but felt as if they were more hopeful and less desperate when I was near them. In this unreasonable restlessness and pain of mind, I would roam the streets of an evening, wandering by those offices and houses where I had left the petitions. To the present hour, the weary western streets of London on a cold dusty spring night, with their ranges of stern shut-up mansions and their long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from this association.

The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected of an intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched before I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was always there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure him of the singleness

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480 of my designs. Nobody was hard with him or with me. There was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The officer always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some other sick prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners who attended on them as sick nurses malefactors, but not incapable of kindness, be thanked!), always joined in the same report.

As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in his face, until some word of mine brightened it for an instant, and then it would subside again. Sometimes he was almost, or quite, unable to speak; then, he would answer me with slight pressures on my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well.

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards the door, and lighted up as I entered.

"Dear boy," he said, as I sat down by his bed: "I thought you was late. But I knowed you couldn't be that."

"It is just the time," said I. "I waited for it at the gate."

"You always waits at the gate; don't you, dear boy?"

"Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time."

"Thank'ee, dear boy, thank'ee. God bless you! You've never deserted me, dear boy."

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had once meant to desert him.

"And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the sun shone. That's the best of all."

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what he would, and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and again, and a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling.

"Are you in much pain to-day?"

"I don't complain of none, dear boy."

"You never do complain."

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I

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Rh  his touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it.

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking round, I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and he whispered, "You needn't go yet." I thanked him gratefully, and asked, "Might I speak to him, if he can hear me?"

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. The change, though it was made without noise, drew back the film from the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked most affectionately at me.

"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you now, at last. You understand what I say?"

A gentle pressure on my hand.

"You had a child once, whom you loved and lost."

A stronger pressure on my hand.

"She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!"

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for my yielding to it, and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips. Then he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back, and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than "O Lord, be merciful to him a sinner!"

that I was left wholly to myself I gave notice of my intention to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I put bills up in the windows;

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482 for, I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed if I had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clear perception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor—anywhere, according as I happened to sink down—with a heavy head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one night which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden-court in the dead of the night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there; whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half suspected those sounds to be of my own making; whether there had been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a voice had called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was consuming within it; these were things that I tried to settle with myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed. But the vapour of a lime-kiln would come between me and them, disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I saw two men looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked, starting; "I don't know you."

"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on the shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare say, but you're arrested."

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Rh "What is the debt?"

"Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's account, I think."

"What is to be done?"

"You had better come to my house," said the man. "I keep a very nice house."

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed, looking at me. I still lay there.

"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I could; but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall die by the way."

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me to believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hang in my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know what they did, except that they forbore to remove me.

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that I often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I confounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was a brick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from the giddy place where the builders had set me; that I was a steel beam of a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part in it hammered off; that I passed through these phases of disease, I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort know at the time. That I sometimes struggled with real people, in the belief that they were murderers, and that I would all at once comprehend that they meant to do one good, and would then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer them to lay me down, I also knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there was a constant tendency in all these people—who, when I was very ill, would present all kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face, and would be much dilated in size—above all, I say, I knew that there was an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later, to settle down into the likeness of Joe.

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484 After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice that while all its other features changed, this one consistent feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, "Is it Joe?"

And the dear old home-voice answered, "Which it air, old chap."

"O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to me!"

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side, and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.

"Which dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe, "you and me was ever friends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride—what larks!"

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness prevented me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitently whispering, "O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian man!"

Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but, I was holding his hand and we both felt happy.

"How long, dear Joe?"

"Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear old chap?"

"Yes, Joe."

"It's the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June."

"And have you been here all the time, dear Joe?"

"Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the news of your being ill were brought by letter, which it

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 were brought by the post, and being formerly single he is now married though underpaid for a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were not a object on his part, and marriage were the great wish of his hart"

"It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you in what you said to Biddy."

"Which it were," said Joe, "that how you might be amongst strangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And Biddy, her word were, 'Go to him, without loss of time.' That," said Joe, summing up with his judicial air, "were the word of Biddy. 'Go to him,' Biddy say, 'without loss of time.' In short, I shouldn't greatly deceive you," Joe added, after a little grave reflection, "if I represented to you that the word of that young woman were, 'without a minute's loss of time.'"

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crowbar or sledge-hammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six

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 feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block, but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various points of view as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction.

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next day. He shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered?

"Is she dead, Joe?"

"Why, you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and by way of getting at it by degrees, "I wouldn't go so far as to say that, for that's a deal to say; but she ain't"

"Living, Joe?"

"That's nigher where it is," said Joe; "she ain't living."

"Did she linger long, Joe?"

"Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call (if you was put to it) a week," said Joe; still determined, on my account, to come at everything by degrees.

"Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?"

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's account of him the said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air the writing,"

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 said Joe, repeating the legal term as if it did him infinite good, "'account of him the said Matthew.' And a cool four thousand, Pip!"

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the other relations had any legacies?

"Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twenty-five pound perannium fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she have twenty pound down. Mrs. what's the name of them wild beasts with humps, old chap?"

"Camels?" said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know.

Joe nodded. "Mrs. Camels," by which I presently understood he meant Camilla, "she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put her in spirits when she wake up in the night."

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to give me great confidence in Joe's information. "And now," said Joe, "you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more nor one additional shovelfull to-day. Old Orlick he's been a bustin' open a dwelling-ouse."

"Whose?" said I.

"Not, I grant you, but what his manners is given to blusterous," said Joe, apologetically; "still, a Englishman's ouse is his Castle, and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war time. And wotsume'er the failings on his part, he were a corn and seedsman in his hart."

"Is it Pumblechook's house that has been broken into, then?"

"That's it, Pip," said Joe; "and they took his till, and they took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and they tied him up to his bedpust,

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488 and they giv' him a dozen, and they stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to perwent his crying out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick's in the county jail."

By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. I was slow to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become less weak, and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip again.

For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my need, that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk to me in the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the old unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles of the fever that was gone. He did everything for me except the household work, for which he had engaged a very decent woman, after paying off the laundress on his first arrival. "Which I do assure you, Pip," he would often say, in explanation of that liberty; "I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale. Which she would have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a laying on it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in the soup-tureen and wegetable dishes, and the wine and spirits in your Wellington boots."

We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, as we had once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. And when the day came, and an open carriage was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up, took me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if I were still the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly given of the wealth of his great nature.

And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the country, where the rich summer growth was already on the trees and on the grass, and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The day happened to be Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought how it had grown and changed, and how the little wild flowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthened, by day and by night, under the sun

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Rh and under the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrace of having burned and tossed there, came like a check upon my peace. But, when I heard the Sunday bells, and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt that I was not nearly thankful enough—that I was too weak yet, to be even that—and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had laid it long ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too much for my young senses.

More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we used to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my eyes still; just as simply faithful, just as simply right.

When we got back again and he lifted me out, and carried me—so easily!—across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that eventful Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes. We had not yet made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I know how much of my late history he was acquainted with. I was so doubtful of myself now, and put so much trust in him, that I could not satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to it when he did not.

"Have you heard, Joe," I asked him that evening, upon further consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, "who my patron was?"

"I heerd," returned Joe, "as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap."

"Did you hear who it was, Joe?"

"Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv' you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip."

"So it was."

"Astonishing!" said Joe, in the placidest way.

"Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?" I presently asked, with increasing diffidence.

"Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?"

"Yes."

"I think," said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking rather evasively at the window-seat, "as I did

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 hear tell that how he were something or another in a general way in that direction."

"Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?"

"Not partickler, Pip."

"If you would like to hear, Joe" I was beginning, when Joe got up and came to my sofa.

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe, bending over me. "Ever the best of friends; ain't us, Pip?"

I was ashamed to answer him.

"Werry good, then," said Joe, as if I had answered; "that's all right; that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap, which as betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There's subjects enough as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your poor sister and her Rampages! And don't you remember Tickler?"

"I do indeed, Joe."

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe. "I done what I could to keep you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to my inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it were not so much," said Joe, in his favourite argumentative way, "that she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her, but that she dropped into you always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain't a grab at a man's whisker, nor yet a shake or two of a man (to which your sister was quite welcome), that 'ud put a man off from getting a little child out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped into, heavier, for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up and says to himself, 'Where is the good as you are a doing? I grant you I see the 'arm,' says the man, 'but I don't see the good. I call upon you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good.'"

"The man says?" I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak.

"The man says," Joe assented. "Is he right, that man?"

"Dear Joe, he is always right."

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "then abide by your words.

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Rh If he's always right (which in general he's more likely wrong), he's right when he says this:—Supposing ever you kep any little matter to yourself, when you was a little child, you kep it mostly because you know'd as J. Gargery's power to part you and Tickler in sunders, were not fully equal to his inclinations. Theerfore, think no more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass remarks upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy giv' herself a deal o' trouble with me afore I left (for I am most awful dull), as I should view it in this light, and, viewing it in this light, as I should ser put it. Both of which," said Joe, quite charmed with his logical arrangement, "being done, now this to you a true friend, say. Namely. You mustn't go a overdoing on it, but you must have your supper and your wine-and-water, and you must be put betwixt the sheets."

The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet tact and kindness with which Biddy—who with her woman's wit had found me out so soon—had prepared him for it, made a deep impression on my mind. But whether Joe knew how poor I was, and how my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists before the sun, I could not understand.

Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a sorrowful comprehension of, was this: As I became stronger and better, Joe became a little less easy with me. In my weakness and entire dependence on him, the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the old names, the dear "old Pip, old chap," that now were music in my ears. I too had fallen into the old ways, only happy and thankful that he let me. But, imperceptibly, though I held by them fast, Joe's hold upon them began to slacken; and whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to understand that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was all mine.

Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off? Had I given Joe's innocent heart no cause to feel instinctively that as I got stronger, his hold

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492 upon me would be weaker, and that he had better loosen it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself away?

It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out walking in the Temple Gardens, leaning on Joe's arm, that I saw this change in him very plainly. We had been sitting in the bright warm sunlight, looking at the river, and I chanced to say as we got up:

"See, Joe! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see me walk back by myself."

"Which do not overdo it, Pip," said Joe; "but I shall be happy fur to see you able, sir."

The last word grated on me; but how could I remonstrate! I walked no further than the gate of the gardens, and then pretended to be weaker than I was, and asked Joe for his arm. Joe gave it me, but was thoughtful.

I, for my part, was thoughtful too; for how best to check this growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to my remorseful thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was placed, and what I had come down to, I do not seek to conceal; but, I hope my reluctance was not quite an unworthy one. He would want to help me out of his little savings, I knew, and I knew that he ought not to help me, and that I must not suffer him to do it.

It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, before we went to bed, I had resolved that I would wait over to-morrow, to-morrow being Sunday, and would begin my new course with the new week. On Monday morning I would speak to Joe about this change, I would lay aside this last vestige of reserve, I would tell him what I had in my thoughts (that Secondly, not yet arrived at), and why I had not decided to go out to Herbert, and then the change would be conquered for ever. As I cleared, Joe cleared, and it seemed as though he had sympathetically arrived at a resolution too.

We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the country, and then walked in the fields.

"I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe," I said.

"Dear old Pip, old chap, you're a'most come round, sir."

"It has been a memorable time for me, Joe."

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Wikisource:Books/Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty

 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter I
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter II
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter III
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter IV
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter V
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter VI
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter VII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter VIII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter IX
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter X
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XI
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XIII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XIV
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XV
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XVI
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XVII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XVIII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XIX
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XX
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXI
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXIII
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXIV
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXV
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXVI
 * Progress and Poverty (George)/Chapter XXVII

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Rh "Likeways for myself, sir," Joe returned.

"We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget. There were days once, I know, that I did for a while forget; but I never shall forget these."

"Pip," said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, "there has been larks. And, dear sir, what have been betwixt us—have been."

At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my room, as he had done all through my recovery. He asked me if I felt sure that I was as well as in the morning?

"Yes, dear Joe, quite."

"And are always a getting stronger, old chap?"

"Yes, dear Joe, steadily."

Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great good hand, and said, in what I thought a husky voice, "Good night!"

When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, I was full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I would tell him before breakfast. I would dress at once and go to his room and surprise him; for, it was the first day I had been up early. I went to his room, and he was not there. Not only was he not there, but his box was gone.

I hurried then to the breakfast-table, and on it found a letter. These were its brief contents:

"Not wishful to intrude I have departured for you are well again dear Pip and will do better without "Jo.

"P.S. Ever the best of friends."

Enclosed in the letter, was a receipt for the debt and costs on which I had been arrested. Down to that moment I had vainly supposed that my creditor had withdrawn or suspended proceedings until I should be quite recovered. I had never dreamed of Joe's having paid the money; but, Joe had paid it, and the receipt was in his name.

What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old forge, and there to have out my disclosure to him, and my penitent remonstrance with him, and there to

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494  my mind and heart of that reserved Secondly, which had begun as a vague something lingering in my thoughts, and had formed into a settled purpose?

The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, "Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am as sorry, Biddy, and have as much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am a little worthier of you than I was—not much, but a little. And, Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an opportunity awaits me which I set aside when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you."

Such was my purpose. After three days more of recovery, I went down to the old place, to put it in execution. And how I sped in it, is all I have left to tell.

tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall, had got down to my native place and its neighbourhood, before I got there. I found the Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I found that it made a great change in the Boar's demeanour. Whereas the Boar had

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Rh my good opinion with warm assiduity when I was coming into property, the Boar was exceedingly cool on the subject now that I was going out of property.

It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had so often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my usual bedroom, which was engaged (probably by some one who had expectations), and could only assign me a very indifferent chamber among the pigeons and post-chaises up the yard. But, I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior accommodations the Boar could have given me, and the quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.

Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting ready, I strolled round by Satis House. There were printed bills on the gate and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to be sold as old building materials, and pulled down. 1 was marked in whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brewhouse; 2 on that part of the main building which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the dust and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open gate and looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who had no business there, I saw the auctioneer's clerk walking on the casks and telling them off for the information of a catalogue compiler, pen in hand, who made a temporary desk of the wheeled chair I had so often pushed along to the tune of Old Clem.

When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar's coffee-room, I found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook (not improved in appearance by his late nocturnal adventure) was waiting for me, and addressed me in the following terms.

"Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else could be expected! what else could be expected!"

As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving

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496 air, and as I was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it.

"William," said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, "put a muffin on table. And has it come to this! Has it come to this!"

I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook stood over me and poured out my tea—before I could touch the teapot—with the air of a benefactor who was resolved to be true to the last.

"William," said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, "put the salt on. In happier times," addressing me, "I think you took sugar? And did you take milk? You did. Sugar and milk. William, bring a watercress."

"Thank you," said I shortly, "but I don't eat watercresses."

"You don't eat 'em," returned Mr. Pumblechook, sighing and nodding his head several times, as if he might have expected that, and as if abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my downfall. "True. The simple fruits of the earth. No. You needn't bring any, William."

I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook continued to stand over me, staring fishily and breathing noisily, as he always did.

"Little more than skin and bone!" mused Mr. Pumblechook, aloud. "And yet when he went away from here (I may say with my blessing), and I spread afore him my humble store, like the Bee, he was as plump as a Peach!"

This reminded me of the wonderful difference between the servile manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, saying, "May I?" and the ostentatious clemency with which he had just now exhibited the same fat five fingers.

"Hah!" he went on, handing me the bread-and-butter. "And air you a going to Joseph?"

"In Heaven's name," said I, firing in spite of myself, "what does it matter to you where I am going? Leave that teapot alone."

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Rh It was the worst course I could have taken, because it gave Pumblechook the opportunity he wanted.

"Yes, young man," said he, releasing the handle of the article in question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for the behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, "I will leave that teapot alone. You are right, young man. For once, you are right. I forgit myself when I take such an interest in your breakfast, as to wish your frame, exhausted by the debilitating effects of prodigygality, to be stimilated by the 'olesome nourishment of your forefathers. And yet," said Pumblechook, turning to the landlord and waiter, and pointing me out at arm's length, "this is him as I ever sported with in his days of happy infancy! Tell me not it cannot be; I tell you this is him!"

A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter appeared to be particularly affected.

"This is him," said Pumblechook, "as I have rode in my shay-cart. This is him as I have seen brought up by hand. This is him untoe the sister of which I was uncle by marriage, as her name was Georgiana M'ria from her own mother, let him deny it if he can!"

The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, and that it gave the case a black look.

"Young man," said Pumblechook, screwing his head at me in the old fashion, "you air a going to Joseph. What does it matter to me, you ask me, where you air a going? I say to you, sir, you air a going to Joseph."

The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to get over that.

"Now," said Pumblechook, and all this with a most exasperating air of saying in the cause of virtue what was perfectly convincing and conclusive, "I will tell you what to say to Joseph. Here is Squires of the Boar present, known and respected in this town, and here is William, which his father's name was Potkins if I do not deceive myself."

"You do not, sir," said William.

"In their presence," pursued Pumblechook, "I will tell

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498 you, young man, what to say to Joseph. Says you, 'Joseph, I have this day seen my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortun's. I will name no names, Joseph, but so they are pleased to call him up-town, and I have seen that man.'"

"I swear I don't see him here," said I.

"Say that likewise," retorted Pumblechook. "Say you said that, and even Joseph will probably betray surprise."

"There you quite mistake him," said I. "I know better."

"Says you," Pumblechook went on, "'Joseph, I have seen that man, and that man bears you no malice and bears me no malice. He knows your character, Joseph, and is well acquainted with your pig-headedness and ignorance; and he knows my character, Joseph, and he knows my want of gratitoode. Yes, Joseph,' says you," here Pumblechook shook his head and hand at me, "'he knows my total deficiency of common human gratitoode. He knows it, Joseph, as none can. You do not know it, Joseph, having no call to know it, but that man do.'"

Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he could have the face to talk thus to mine.

"Says you, 'Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I will now repeat. It was, that in my being brought low, he saw the finger of Providence. He knowed that finger when he saw it, Joseph, and he saw it plain. It pinted out this writing, Joseph. Reward of ingratitoode to earliest benefactor, and founder of fortun's. But that man said that he did not repent of what he had done, Joseph. Not at all. It was right to do it, it was kind to do it, it was benevolent to do it, and he would do it again.'"

"It's a pity," said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted breakfast, "that the man did not say what he had done and would do again."

"Squires of the Boar!" Pumbiechook was now addressing the landlord, "and William! I have no objections to your mentioning, either up-town or down-town, if such should be your wishes, that it was right to do it, kind to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I would do it again."

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Rh With those words the Impostor shook them both by the hand, with an air, and left the house; leaving me much more astonished than delighted by the virtues of that same indefinite "it." I was not long after him in leaving the house too, and when I went down the High-street I saw him holding forth (no doubt to the same effect) at his shop door to a select group, who honoured me with very unfavourable glances as I passed on the opposite side of the way.

But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe, whose great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that could be, contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards them slowly, for my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increasing relief as I drew nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance and untruthfulness further and further behind.

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that country-side more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, and of the change for the better that would come over my character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear home-wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. They awakened a tender emotion in me; for, my heart was softened by my return, and such a change had come to pass that I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel, and whose wanderings had lasted many years.

The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress, I had never seen; but, the little roundabout lane by which I entered the village for quietness' sake, took me past it. I was disappointed to find that the day was a holiday; no children were there, and Biddy's house was closed. Some hopeful notion of seeing her, busily engaged in her daily duties, before she saw me, had been in my mind and was defeated.

But, the forge was a very short distance off, and I went towards it under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of Joe's hammer. Long after I ought to have heard

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 it, and long after I had fancied I heard it and found it but a fancy, all was still. The limes were there, and the white thorns were there, and the chestnut-trees were there, and the leaves rustled harmoniously when I stopped to listen; but, the clink of Joe's hammer was not in the midsummer wind.

Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the forge, I saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of fire, no glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows; all shut up, and still.

But, the house was not deserted, and the best parlour seemed to be in use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window, and the window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly towards it, meaning to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy stood before me, arm in arm.

At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my apparition, but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, and she wept to see me; I, because she looked so fresh and pleasant; she, because I looked so worn and white.

"But, dear Biddy, how smart you are!"

"Yes, dear Pip."

"And Joe, how smart you are!"

"Yes, dear old Pip, old chap."

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then

"It's my wedding-day," cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, "and I am married to Joe!"

They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head down on the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her lips, and Joe's restoring touch was on my shoulder. "Which he warn't strong enough, my dear, fur to be surprised," said Joe. And Biddy said, "I ought to have thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy." They were both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so touched by my coming to them, so delighted that I should have come by accident to make their day complete!

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 My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had never breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips. How irrevocable would have been his knowledge of it, if he had remained with me but another hour!

"Dear Biddy," said I, "you have the best husband in the whole world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would haveBut no, you couldn't love him better than you do."

"No, I couldn't indeed," said Biddy.

"And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good, noble Joe!"

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve before his eyes.

"And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day and are in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid! And when I say that I am going away within the hour, for I am soon going abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked for the money with which you have kept me out of prison, and have sent it to you, don't think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could!"

They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me to say no more.

"But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney corner of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone out of it for ever. Don't tell him, Joe, that I was thankless; don't tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell him that I honoured you both, because you were both so good and true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to grow up a much better man than I did."

"I ain't a going," said Joe, from behind his sleeve, "to tell him nothink o' that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain't. Nor yet no one ain't."

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 "And now, though I know you have already done it in your own kind hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! Pray let me hear you say the words, that I may carry the sound of them away with me, and then I shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and think better of me, in the time to come!"

"O dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe. "God knows as I forgive you, if I have anythink to forgive!"

"Amen! And God knows I do!" echoed Biddy.

"Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a few minutes by myself. And then when I have eaten and drunk with you, go with me as far as the finger-post, dear Joe and Biddy, before we say good bye!"

I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a composition with my creditors—who gave me ample time to pay them in full—and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and Co., and within four months I assumed my first undivided responsibility. For, the beam across the parlour ceiling at Mill Pond Bank, had then ceased to tremble under old Bill Barley's growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to marry Clara, and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until he brought her back.

Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House; but, I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy and Joe. It was not until I became third in the Firm, that Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert; but, he then declared that the secret of Herbert's partnership had been long enough upon his conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert was as much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I were not the worse friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it to be supposed that we were ever a great House, or that we made mints of money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so

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 much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

CHAPTER LIX.

eleven years I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily eyes—though they had both been often before my fancy in the East—when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it so softly that I was not heard, and I looked in unseen. There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as strong as ever, though a little grey, sat Joe; and there, fenced in the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, wasI again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side (but I did not rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little girl lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me, one of these days; or lend him, at all events."

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy, I have so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am already quite an old bachelor."

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 Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it into mine. There was something in the action and in the light pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?"

"O no—I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?"

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy, all gone by!"

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This release had befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, she was married again.

The early dinner-hour at Joe's left me abundance of time, without hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old objects and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I came to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were

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 shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden-walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me as I advanced. It had been moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out:

"Estella!"

"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me."

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, "After so many years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?"

"I have never been here since."

"Nor I."

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, and I thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the last words he had heard on earth.

Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us.

"I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place!"

The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moonlight, and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her eyes. Not knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get the better of them, she said quietly:

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506 "Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be left in this condition?"

"Yes, Estella."

"The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined resistance I made in all the wretched years."

"Is it to be built on?"

"At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its change. And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer, "you live abroad still."

"Still."

"And do well, I am sure?"

"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore—Yes, I do well!"

"I have often thought of you," said Estella.

"Have you?"

"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart."

"You have always held your place in my heart," I answered.

And we were silent again until she spoke.

"I little thought," said Estella, "that I should take leave of you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly, "'God bless you, God forgive you!' And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now—now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but—I

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Rh a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

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 No. 31.]

All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the House of the Lord was laid. But many of the Priests and Levites, and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men that had seen the first House, when the foundation of this House was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.— iii. 11, 12.

remarks may, perhaps, be profitably made on the following well known lines in Herbert's Church Militant, in which the text above quoted is applied to our own period:

Surely there is a close analogy between the state of the Jews after the captivity, and our own; and, if so, a clear understanding and acknowledgment of it will tend to teach us our own place, and suggest to us our prospects.

1. It is scarcely necessary to notice the general correspondence between the fortunes of the two Churches. Both Jews and Christians "left their first love," mixed with the world, were brought under the power of their enemies, went into captivity, and at length, through God's mercy, were brought back again from Babylon. Ezra and Nehemiah are the forerunners of our Ridleys and Lauds; Sanballat and Geshem of the disturbers of our Israel. Samaria has set up its rival temple among us.

2. The second Temple lacked the peculiar treasures of the Temple of Solomon, the Prince of Peace; such as the Ark, the visible glory of God, the tables of the Covenant, Aaron's rod, the manna, the oracle. In like manner the Christian Church was, in the beginning, set up in unity; unity of doctrine, or truth, unity of discipline, or catholicism, unity of heart, or charity. In spite of the heresies which then disturbed the repose of Christians, consider the evidences which present themselves in ecclesiastical


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 history of their firm endurance of persecution, their tender regard for the members of Christ, however widely removed by place and language, their self-denying liberality in supplying their wants, the close correspondence of all parts of the body Catholic, as though it were but one family, their profound reverential spirit towards sacred things, the majesty of their religious services, and the noble strictness of their life and conversation. Here we see the "Rod" of the Priesthood, budding forth with fresh life; the "Manna" of the Christian ordinances uncorrupted; the "Oracle" of Tradition fresh from the breasts of the Apostles; the "Law," written in its purity on "the fleshly tables of the heart;" the "Shechinah," which a multitude of Martyrs, Saints, Confessors, and gifted Teachers, poured throughout the Temple. But where is our unity now? our ministrations of self-denying love? our prodigality of pious and charitable works? our resolute resistance of evil? We are reformed; we have come out of Babylon, and have rebuilt our Church; but it is Ichabod; "the glory is departed from Israel."

3. The Jewish polity was, on its restoration, so secularized, that the vestiges of a Theocracy scarcely remained in the eyes of any but attentive believers. That it really existed as before, is plain from the prophetic gift possessed by Caiaphas, wicked man as he was. Consider the anomaly of the political relation of the Jews towards the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ, their alliance with Rome, their dispersion over the Roman Empire, their disuse of certain of the Mosaic ordinances, the cruelties and blasphemies of Antiochus, the reign of Herod, and his virtual re-building of the Temple, a remarkable omen as regards ourselves. Turn to the restored Christian Church, and reflect upon the perplexed questions concerning the union of Church and State, to which the politics of the last three centuries have given rise; the tyrannical encroachments of the civil power at various eras; the profanations at the time of the Great Rebellion; the deliberate impiety of the French Revolution; and the present apparent breaking up of Ecclesiastical Polity every where, the innumerable schisms, the mixture of men of different creeds and sects, and the contempt poured upon any show of Apostolical zeal.

4. Consider the following passages from the Prophets, after the Captivity, and see if they do not apply to present times.


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 Hagg. i. 4—10. "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the of Hosts, Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes," &c.

Mal. i. 6—13. "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master; if then I be a Father, where is Mine honour? and if I be a Master, where is My fear?…Ye say, The table of the Lord is polluted, and the fruit thereof, even His meat, contemptible. Ye say also. Behold what a weariness is it,…and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering; should I accept this of your hands, saith the ?"

Mal. ii. 1—9. "And now, O ye Priests, this commandment is for you…And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that My covenant might be with Levi, saith the of Hosts. My covenant was with him of life and peace, and I gave them to him, for the fear wherewith he feared Me, and was afraid before My Name. The Law of Truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips; he walked with Me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. For the Priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they shall seek the Law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the  of Hosts. But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the Law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the  of Hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people." Does not the history of the times of Hoadley and such as he, and our present trials throw light upon the parallel?

Mal. iii. 8, 9. "Will a man rob ? yet ye have robbed Me; but ye say. Wherein have we robbed Thee? in tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation."

5. It is remarkable that, while the reinstated Jewish Church was so deficient in zeal, piety, and consistent obedience, and was punished by failure and disorganization; yet it never fell into those gross and flagrant offences, which were the opprobrium of its earlier period. It was clear of the sin of idolatry.


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 6. Moreover consider the parties, unknown to the era of the Theocracy, which divided the Church after the captivity; the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the rest; the necessary consequence of a relaxation of the original principle of national union. The case is the same in this day; as if the Church were already dead, new forms of organization, multiplied varieties of life and action, show themselves within her.

7. Lastly. The following texts suggest hope to all true Christians. (Hag. ii. 5—9.) According to the word that I covenanted with you, when ye came out of Egypt, so : fear ye not." He will be with us even in this base and grovelling age, as with St. Paul, St. Cyprian, and St. Athanasius.

"The glory of this latter house, saith the of Hosts."

Strange it now seems before the event, how the Church should close both with glory and yet in unbelief; yet surely, as in the history of Jerusalem, so now both predictions will be at once fulfilled. (Mal. iv. 1, 2.) "The day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all who do wickedly, shall be stubble: but unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings."

And let it be remembered, that when our Lord seems at greatest distance from His Church, then He is even at the doors. Doubtless, when the Angel appeared in the Temple to Zacharias, the news of a miraculous interposition was as great a marvel to the world at large as if it were now noised abroad of one of our own Ministers in the course of his Christian Service.


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years ago, my dear friend, when you and I had more of the poetry of life at our hearts than, I fear, is left to either of us now, I inscribed with your name a certain slender volume of Poems, printed but not published. Of the hundred copies of those boyish indiscretions which, full of all unimaginable errors of type and press, owed their origin to a French printer, I have not to this day given away more than two or three- and-twenty. I dedicated to you then a book only to be circulated among friends, on the tacit understanding that they were to be alike willing to forgive and eager to commend. I dedicate to you now a book which, the moment it passes from me, goes among readers of whom even the kindly are too luke-warm to praise, the hostile are pre-resolved to

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vi, and every individual, with a cruel justice, holds it a right to expect merit in an author upon all points, and to extend him indulgence upon none. This is the natural and established bond of publication; and of course, like all who publish, I am prepared for its conditions. But ere I again appear before an audience not the less critical—scarcely the less unfamiliar, for my having, into her performances, braved its opinion, let me linger a few minutes behind the scenes, and encourage myself with a friendly conference with you. It gives me pain, my dear * * * * * *, to think that I may not grace my pages with your name; for I well know, that when after-years shall open the fitting opportunity to your talents, that name will not be lightly held wherever honesty and truth—a capacity to devise what is good, and a courage to execute it, are considered qualities worthy of esteem. But in your present pursuits it can scarcely serve you to be praised by a novelist, and named in the dedication to a novel; and your well-wishers would not be pleased to find you ostentatiously exhibiting a sanction to a book, which they would fain hope you may never obtain the leisure to read.

Four years have passed since I dedicated to you the Poems I refer to—they have not brought to either of us an inconsiderable change. We are no longer the rovers of the world, setting sail at our caprice, and finding enterprise at our will. We feel, though with a silent conviction, that life has roads harsher

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 and more barren than we then imagined; and we look on the ways through which we pass, not with the eager or the wandering glance of the tourist, of pleasure, but with the saturnine and wary eye of the hacknied trafficker of business. You are settled down to the labours—honourable, indeed, but somewhat sterile—of the bar; and I, "a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures," am drawing from the bustle of the living world such quiet observation as, after it has lain a little while within my own mind, you perceive re-produced in the pages of certain idle and very indifferent novels. I cling, however, not the less fondly to my old faith, that experience is the only investment which never fails to repay us tenfold what it cost; and that we cannot find better and surer guides through those mazes of life, which we have not only to pass but to retrace, than the error, or the prejudice, or the regret which, with every interval, we leave behind us, as landmarks, on our way.

When you receive these three volumes, printed, and labelled, and boarded, in all the uncut coxcombry of the very last new novel, I know exactly the half frown, half smile, with which you will greet them, and the friendly petulance with which you will pish! and think what a pity it is that " should still write nothing else but a novel."—Is it, indeed, a pity, my dear friend? Are you sure that in writing something else I should write something better? For my part, I often ask

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viii myself that question; and, if I could answer it satisfactorily, this work would never have been written. But let us view the matter fairly; what else shall I write? There is Poetry, in the first place!—Will you—will any one read epic or sonnet—tale or satire—tragedy or epigram?—Whatever be the variety, do you not except at once to the species?—and would you not deem it a less fatigue and a greater profit, to skim through three volumes, than to yawn over a single stanza?—A tide of popular opinion has set against poetry; and in the literary world, as in the natural, the tide and the hour can scarcely be neglected, even by the hardiest adventurer.—Putting, then, poetry out of our consideration—and I wish, for I have all the fondness and weakness of first love still clinging about me, that you would even attempt to convince me that I ought not to do so,—shall we turn to Philosophy? shall I write on the mind, or speculate on the senses?—Alas! to what end? we may judge of the demand for moral philosophy, when we reflect that Hobbes's works are out of print, and that Mills's Analysis has not been reviewed. I will frankly confess to you, that writing is not with me its own reward; and that in order to write, I must first have the hope to be read. Politics, Essays, Travels, Biography, History;—are these subjects on which one is more likely to obtain a decent, a tolerably durable reputation, than one is by the composition of novels?

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Rh I fear not. Let us look around! What encouragement to any of these subjects is held out to us? Are not writings of this sort far more the ephemerals of literature than writings of fiction? Does the biography, or the essay, or the treatise, last even the year for which a novel endures? And if it does not exceed the novel in durability, it can scarcely equal it, you

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x will allow, in popularity. The literary idler who receives it from the library, sends it away and waits for the review in the Quarterly; and the friend, the familiar, to whom you make it a present, shuns you during the rest of your life, lest you should inquire his opinion. You see, my dear * * * * * *, I have viewed the matter on a magnificent scale. I might have checked the question at once;—I might, instead of provoking discussion, by pointing out the unfitness of such attempts, have quieted it by a gentle allusion to the inability of the attempter;—I might have exclaimed "Poetry! I am a poetaster, not a poet. Philosophy! I am a student, not a discoverer. Essays! I have wearied you already with Essays in 'Devereux,' or the 'Disowned.' Travels! Where, oh! where have I travelled?" But this is not the age in which men are so uninventive in motives as to confess to a want of genius, or a scantiness of knowledge; and consequently, I beg you to believe that I write novels, not because I cannot write any thing else, but because novels are the best possible things to be written.

We live in a strange and ominous period for literature. In books as in other manufactures, the great aim seems the abridgement of labour: the idlest work is the most charming. People will only expend their time for immediate returns of knowledge; and the wholesome and fair profit, slow, but permanent, they call tedious in letters, and speculative in politics. This eager yet slothful habit of mind, now so general,

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Rh has brought into notice an emigrant, and motley class of literature, formerly, in this country, little known and less honoured. We throw aside our profound researches, and feast upon popular abridgments; we forsake the old march through elaborate histories, for "a dip" into entertaining memoirs. In this, our immediate bias in literature, if any class of writing has benefited more than another in popularity and estimation, it is the Novel. Readers now look into fiction for facts; as Voltaire, in his witty philosophy, looked among facts for fiction. I do not say that the novel has, in increased merit, deserved its increased reputation: on the contrary, I think, that though our style may be less prolix than it was in the last century, our thoughts are more languid and our invention less racy. However this be, the fashion in literature, of which I speak, has, among the wrecks of much that is great and noble, opened to second-rate ability and mediocre knowledge, paths that were shut to them before. And I, for one, if I have lost as a member of the Public, have gained more than proportionately as an Individual. I feel that I have just sufficient reading, or observation, or reflection, or

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 talent of any sort, to make it possible that I may stumble in a light fiction upon some amusing, perhaps even some useful truths; while neither the reading, nor the observation, nor the reflection, nor the talent, are in all probability sufficient to entitle me to a momentary notice in any graver and more presuming composition. Then, too, I fancy at those "post-prandial hours," when a certain self-complacency diffuses its cheering caloric over the mind,I fancy that I have also by accident stricken out a vein not so wholly hacknied, as that any of my immediate cotemporaries share the possession with myself: for the philosophical novel is at present not only little cultivated in any shape, but those who do break up the unpromising soil, are writers essentially grave and didactic. Such is the graceful and all-accomplished author of "De Vere;" or the fine creator of "St. Leon" and "Mandeville," to whose style may be applied the simile applied somewhat too flatteringly to that of Tertullian—that it is like ebony, at once dark and splendid. The novel, blending chiefly the comic, and occasionally the dramatic qualities with those of the reflective and analysing, is that which (except in "Devereux") I have sought out as the province of my own attempts; and in avoiding a competition with the distinguished writers I have just referred to, I aimed originally at prudence, and gained perhaps something of novelty.

You will observe that I have laid a stress on the words immediate cotemporaries, for I do not deceive myself with

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Rh the idea that I have done any thing the least original; I have only endeavoured to revive what had passed a little into neglect; and if my books have had any success, it is owing to the goodness of the school, and in spite of the faults of the disciple. The combination of the philosophic novel with the comic has indeed long since, in two great authors, been carried to a perfection, which, I confess, I think is not likely to be attained, longo intervallo, by any succeeding writer. The first, and by far the greater of these, (I speak of Fielding) seems a man, who with an universal fame has never met with a full appreciation. To me, he appears not only incomparable as a Novelist—but also one of the soundest thinkers, and most scientific moralists that ever conferred honour on a country, and instruction on mankind. The second, Dr. Moore, has this remarkable merit; he has made us forgive in him, two sins that would have been beyond redemption in any other author,—viz. in style an odious affectation of Gallicisms, and in morals a furtive tendency to import the idea ready-made rather than to work out the raw material at home. To these two may be added Miss Edgeworth, the most faultless, if not the most brilliant of all novelists, past and present. I do not class her among immediate cotemporaries, partly because she seems to have altogether retired from the field, and partly because the same settled and quiet judgment has been passed upon her charming and useful tales which is in general reserved for the decision of

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xiv. Though I can only, then, advance a claim to the merit of the renewer, not the creator,—the furbisher of old pictures, not the artist of new,—I am yet very far from certain that I can reach even an equal merit in any other branch of literature; and thus you perceive a fourth novel from my pen, where your unreflecting friendship would have wished to see an attempt in political morals or history:—History! after all, and despite of all discouragement, there is to every student, every man of closet, or academic, recollections, a wonderful stimulus in that word! and, perhaps, I may already, and in defiance of my own judgment, and the warnings around, have nursed within me some project in that most noble yet least ransacked department of intellectual research, which in after-years I may disappoint you and embody. But this is not to be lightly begun, nor even immaturely conceived; and how many casualties may arise to mar altogether the execution of such a project! how many casualties, even at the best, may procrastinate it to the languor of age, and the energies slackened by long familiarity with the crosses and contests of life! Often, when through youth and manhood we imagine we are cherishing our concluding triumph, we are only nursing our latest

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Rh disappointment. Meanwhile, at present, if I anticipate but little gain, I can meet with but a trifling loss: I do not set my heart on the success of efforts, which, I allow with my enemies, (for to have enemies is the doom of literature, which even the most ordinary writer does not escape,) are petty and unimportant; I am not so elevated by the praise of this man, or so humbled by the blame of that, as to forfeit "the level temperature of the mind," or transgress the small and charmed circle from which Reason—a sorceress when she confines her efforts, an impostor when she enlarges them—banishes the intrusion of others. Nor do I myself believe that to any one who has formed the habit of application, is the production of books, whatever be their nature, (so long as they are neither in poetry nor abstract science) attended with that utter and absorbing engrossment of time which is usually imagined. Life has hours enough for all but the idle; and for my own part, if I were not in the common habit of turning to more important subjects, as a study, I should never have had the presumption to write even novels, as a recreation. Do not conceive, however, from what I have said, that I am going to write novels all the rest of my life,—I am excusing what has been, and is,—not prefacing what is to be.

I have now, my dear friend, said all that I wished to touch upon in excuse for the nature of my productions. I do not make you, nor, through you, my Readers, an apology for my egotism or my prolixity.

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xvi To all writers a Dedication is unchallenged and licensed ground: to all Readers is granted a liberty, no less acknowledged—that of passing over it with whatever rapidity they please. I have been holding intercourse with you with as much frankness as if the letters I now write were not presently to be translated into the unfamiliar characters of the press; and if I have gone a little too largely into general or into individual topics, I must make amends by touching as briefly as possible on the work now before you.

For the original idea of Paul Clifford, I am indebted to a gentleman of considerable distinction in literature, and whose kindness to me is one of my most gratifying remembrances. This idea, had the work been shorter, would have pervaded the whole; as it is, it will be found embodied in those parts which, I believe, will be the most popular in the book. Such as the scene at Gentleman George's, the sketch of Bachelor Bill, &c. As example is more explanatory than detail, I refer to these passages for the illustration of my friend's suggestion, rather than attempt to unfold and enlarge on it here. In justice to my friend, I should add, first, that I feel I have given a very inadequate form to a conception that appears to me peculiarly felicitous; and secondly, that as I have made use of his idea rather as an adjunct to my story, than as the principal groundwork of the story itself, all the faults of plot and deficiencies of invention that may be found in the progress and dénouement of my

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Rh tale, are solely and wholly to be laid to my charge. It were to be wished that my friend had found leisure himself, among labours more important, to embody his own idea; or that, in giving me the canvass, he could have given me also his skill to colour and his talent to create.

I can scarcely conceive, what you, who are rather fastidious about the niceties of language, will think of the vulgar graces wherewith the greater part of my first volume is adorned. I must own, that I have on this point steeled myself against censure; for, independent of any latent application or irony in the dialect I refer to, I am willing to risk an experiment, tried successfully in Scotland and Ireland—though not in the present day attempted in

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xviii giving descriptive and appropriate dialogue to classes of society, far more capable of yielding interest or amusement to persons of any mental vigour, whatever be their rank, than trite copies of the languid inanities of a drawing-room, or lifeless portraits of originals, whose very boast it is to be scarcely alive.

For any occasional retaliation on critics, enemies, or Scotchmen—(with me, for the most part, they

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Rh have been found three appellations for the same thing,) for many very hard words, and very smart hits against myself—I offer no excuse:—my retaliation is in the spirit of English warfare—blows at one moment, and good humour the next.—As for Scotchmen, I am not quite sure that they have been yet able to expel from my breast the lurking kindness which it once bore towards them.—It is not an easy matter seriously to dislike, however ingeniously one may rail against, the country that has produced Burns, and Scott, and Campbell—a country too, by the way, with which you claim a connection, and of which the distinguished friend I

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xx have mentioned in this epistle is a native.—I return, only, gently enough at present, the first blows with which they have assailed me; I know what to expect in return, and shall scarcely be the one

But, speaking dispassionately, our good fellow-subjects on the other side of the Tweed have one little unpleasant foible which makes them less charming than they otherwise might be—they lose their temper the moment an Englishman gains a single advantage—they become preposterously angry if we get ever so small a name, nay ever so small a fortune in our own country;—they seem to imagine that God Almighty had made them a present of England to do exactly what they please with, and that the Englishman who interferes with their monopoly commits the very worst species of blasphemy.—Whenever we rise the least little step in the world, we are, it is true, sure to be abused; but I fancy, we shall find, on inquiry, that nine times out of ten, the abuse has been uttered in broad Scotch!

It has been made an objection to this book, that the style of the first volume differs from the style of the second and third: this difference was an especial object with me in writing the work. Scenes in society essentially contrasted, appear to require language suitable to the contrast, and I cannot but think that one of the great and ordinary faults in fiction, is

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Rh the narrating all events, and describing all varieties, with the same monotonous and unmodulating tone.

The Hero of the story is an attempt to pourtray an individual of a species of which the country is now happily rid, but which seem to me to have possessed as many of the real properties of romance, especially comic and natural romance, as the foreign Carbonari and exotic pirates whom it has pleased English writers, in search of captivating villains, to import to their pages. For my part, I will back an English highwayman, masked, armed, mounted, and trotting over Hounslow Heath, against the prettiest rascal the Continent ever produced.

In conclusion, let me add that I have endeavoured to take warning from the errors of my preceding works. Perhaps it will be found that, in this the story is better conducted, and the interest more uniformly upheld, than in my other productions. I have outlived the Recluse's desire to be didascular, and have avoided alike essay-writing and digression;—in a word, I have studied more than in my two last works to write a tolerably entertaining novel. I have admitted only one episode of importance—the History of Augustus Tomlinson; and I have only admitted that exception, because the History is no episode in the moral and general design, though it is in the current of narration.

And now, my dear friend, it is high time that I should end an Epistle already too long, even for your

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xxii patience. Whatever be the fate of this book, or of those which have preceded it; whether they have arisen like the insects kindled from the Sicilian fountain—quickened with one moment, and perishing with the next,—or whether, in spite of a thousand faults which no one can detect easier than myself, something, betokening, perhaps, no thoughtless or irreverent inattention to the varieties of Nature, and no unkindly disposition towards her offspring, may detain them on the public mind yet a little while beyond the brief season which gave them birth;——one gratification I have at least secured!—I have associated this novel, which I incline to hope may not be considered my worst, and which possibly may be my last, with such remembrances as will survive defeat, or endear success.
 * Adieu, my dear * * * * *,
 * Wishing you all health and happiness,
 * Believe me your very
 * Affectionate Friend,
 * E. L. B.

Hertford-street, April, 1830.

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2 agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man evidently of the lowest orders was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated,—and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door, he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,—"But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!" Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded, that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy

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 buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or ale-house, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.

"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.

"Noa, noa! not exactly—but I thinks as ow"

"Pish, you fool!" cried the woman interrupting him, peevishly: "Vy, it is no use desaving of me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So, there's the poor cretur a-raving and a-dying, and you"

"Let I speak!" interrupted Dummie in his turn. "I tells you, I vent first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Bible, and she says, says she, 'I 'as only a

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4 "Companion to the Halter!" but you'll get a bible, I thinks, at Master Talkins,—the cobbler—as preaches.' So I goes to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Bible, 'cause vy, I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a-getting it at the butcher's hover the vay—cause vy?—the butcher'll be damned!' So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Bible; but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like 'un, and mayhap the poor cretur mayn't see the difference.' So I takes the plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be surely!—And how's poor Judy?"

"Fearsome! she'll not be over the night; I'm a-thinking."

"Vell, I'll track up the dancers!"

So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney, afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber, which the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray. The walls were white-washed, and at sundry

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Rh places strange figures and grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate in such sable outline as the end of a smoked stick, or the edge of a piece of charcoal is wont to produce. The wan and flickering light afforded by a farthing candle gave a sort of grimness and menace to these achievements of pictorial art, especially as they more than once received embellishment from portraits of Satan, such as he is accustomed to be drawn. A low fire burned gloomily in the sooty grate; and on the hob hissed "the still small voice" of an iron kettle. On a round deal-table were two vials, a cracked cup, a broken spoon of some dull metal, and upon two or three mutilated chairs were scattered various articles of female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow, shutterless casement, (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny,) were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value; and a watch, the regular and calm clink

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