under the Salford School Board, and, besides his wages, he picks up many trifles. The dustman may dwell with his family in two rooms at three-and-sixpence per week; his equipment consists of a slop, corduroys, and a sou'-wester hat, which are sufficient to last many a day with little washing. But the assistant, whose education alone cost the nation one hundred pounds cash down, not to speak of his own private expenditure, must live in a respectable locality, dress neatly, and keep clear of that ugly soul-killing worry which is inflicted by trouble about money. Decidedly the dustman has the best of the bargain all round, for, to say the least, he does not need to labour very much harder than the professional man. This instance tends to throw a very sinister and significant flash on the way things are tending. Again, some of the gangs of Shipping Federation men have full board and lodging, two changes of clothes free, beer and rum in moderate quantities, and thirty shillings per week. Does anybody in England know a curate who has a salary like that? I do not think it would be possible to find one on the Clergy List. No one grudges the labourers their extra food and high wages; I am only taking note of a significant social circumstance. The curate earns nothing until he is about three-and-twenty; if he goes through one of the older universities, his education costs, up to the time of his going out into the world, something very like two thousand pounds; yet, with all his mental equipment, such as it is, he cannot earn so much as a labourer of his own age. Certainly the humbler classes had their day of bondage when the middleman bore heavily on them; they got clear by a mighty effort which dislocated commerce, but we hardly expected to find them claiming, and obtaining, payments higher than many made to the most refined products of the universities! It is the way of the world; we are bound for change, change, and yet more change; and no man may say how the cycles will widen. Luxury has grown on us since the thousands of wealthy idlers who draw their money from trade began to make the stream of lavish expenditure turn into a series of rushing rapids. The flow of wasted wealth is no longer like the equable gliding of the full Thames; it is like the long deadly flurry of the waters that bears toward Niagara. These newly-enriched people cause the rise of the usual crop of parasites, and it is the study of the parasites which forces on the mind hundreds of reflections concerning the values of different kinds of labour. A little while ago, for example, an exquisitely comic paragraph was printed with all innocence in many journals. It appeared that two of the revived species of parasites known as professional pugilists were unable to dress properly before they began knocking each other about, "because their valets were not on the spot." I hope that the foul old days of the villainous "ring" may never be recalled by anything seen in our day, for there never were any "palmy days," though there were some ruffians who could not be bought. Yet the worst things that happened in the bygone times were not so much fitted to make a man think solemnly as that one delicious phrase—"their valets were not on the spot." In the noble days, when England was so very merry, it often happened that a man who has been battered out of all resemblance to humanity was left to dress himself as best he could on a bleak marsh, and his chivalrous friends made the best of their way home, while the defeated gladiator was reckoned at a dog's value. Now-a-days those sorely-entreated creatures would have their valets. In one department of industry assuredly the value of labour has altered. The very best of the brutal old school once fought desperately for four hours, though it was thought that he must be killed, and his reason was that, if he lost, he would have to beg his bread. Now-a-days he would have a valet, a secretary, a manager, and a crowd of plutocratic admirers who would load him with money and luxuries. I was tickled to the verge of laughter by finding that one of these gentry was paid thirty pounds per night for exhibiting his skill, and my amusement was increased when it turned out that one of those who paid him thirty pounds strongly objected on learning that the hero appeared at two other places, from each of which he received the same sum. Thus for thirty-six minutes of exertion per day the man was drawing five hundred and forty pounds per week. All these things appeared in the public prints; but no public writer took any serious notice of a symptom which is as significant as any ever observed in the history of mankind. It is almost awe-striking to contemplate these parasites, and think what their rank luxurious existence portends. Here we see a man of vast wealth, whereof every pound was squeezed from the blood and toil of working-men; he passes his time now in the company of these fellows who have earned a reputation by pounding each other. The wealthy bully and his hangers-on are dangerous to the public peace; their language is too foul for even men of the world to endure it, and the whole crew lord it in utter contempt of law and decency. That is the kind of spectacle to be seen in our central city almost every night. Consider a story which accidently came out a few weeks ago owing to legal proceedings and kept pleasure-seeking and scandalmongering London laughing for a while, and say whether any revelation ever gave us a picture of a more unspeakable society. A rich man, A., keeps a prizefighter, B., to "mind" him, as the quaint phrase goes. Mr. A. is offended by another prizefighter, C., and he offers B. the sum of five hundred pounds if he will give C. a beating in public. B. goes to C., and says, "I will give you ten pounds if you will let me thrash you, and I won't hurt you much." C. gladly consents, so B. pockets four hundred and ninety pounds for himself, and the noble patron's revenge is satisfied. There is a true tale of rogues and a fool—a tale to make one brood and brood until the sense of fun passes into black melancholy. Five hundred men worked for sixty hours per week before that money was earned—and think of the value received for the whole sum when it was spent! Truly the parasite's exertions are lucrative to himself!

As for the market-price of book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not worth so much as naming. The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in times when the "neck-verse" would save a man from the gallows; but "clerk" has far altered its meaning, and the modern being of that name is in sorrowful case. So contemptibly cheap are his poor services that he in person is not looked upon as a man, but rather as a lump of raw material which is at present on sale in a glutted market. All the walks of life wherein men proceed as though they belonged to the leisured class are becoming no fit places for self-respecting people. Gradually the ornamental sort of workers are being displaced; the idle rich are too plentiful, but I question whether even the idle rich have done, so much harm as the genteel poor who are ashamed of labour. I do not like to see wages going downward, but there are exceptions, and I am almost disposed to feel glad that the searchers after "genteel" employment are now very much like the birds during a long frost. The enormous lounging class who earn nothing do not offer an agreeable subject for contemplation, and their parasites are horrible—there is no other word. Yet we may gather a little consolation when we think that the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something or produce something. It is not good to know that a dustman makes more money than hundreds of hard-worked and well-educated men, for this is a grotesque state of things brought about by imbecile Government officials. Neither do I quite like to know that a lady whose education occupied nine years of her life is offered less wages than a good housemaid. But I do assuredly like to hear how the higher class of manual labourers flourish; they are the salt of the earth, and I rejoice that they are no longer held down and regarded as in some way inferior to men who do nothing for two hundred pounds a year, except try to look as if they had two thousand pounds. The quiet man who does the delicate work on the monster engines of a great ocean steamer is worthy of his hire, costly as his hire may be. On his eye, his judgment of materials, his nerve, and his dexterity of hand depend precious lives. For three thousand miles those vast masses of machinery must force a huge hull through huge seas; the mighty and shapely fabrics of metal must work with the ease of a child's toy locomotive, and they must bear a strain that is never relaxed though all the most tremendous forces of Nature may threaten. What a charge for a man! His earnings could hardly be raised high enough if we consider the momentous nature of the duty he fulfils; he is an aristocrat of labour, and we do not know that there is not something grotesque in measuring and arguing over the money-payment made to him. Then there are the specially skilled hands who in their monkish seclusion work at the instruments wherewith scientific wonders are wrought. The rewards of their toil would have seemed fabulous to such men as Harrison the watchmaker; but they also form an aristocracy, and they win the aristocrat's guerdon without practising his idleness. The mathematician who makes the calculations for a machine is not so well paid as the man who finishes it; the observatory calculator who calculates the time of occulation for a planet cannot earn so much as the one who grinds a reflector. In all our life the same tendency is to be seen: the work of the hand outdoes in value the work of the brain.



XII.

THE HOPELESS POOR.

By fits and starts the public wake up and own with much clamour that there is a great deal of poverty in our midst. While each new fit lasts the enthusiasm of good people is quite impressive in its intensity; all the old hackneyed signatures appear by scores in the newspapers, and "Pro Bono Publico," "Audi Alteram Partem," "X.Y.Z.," "Paterfamilias," "An Inquirer," have their theories quite pat and ready. Picturesque writers pile horror on horror, and strive, with the delightful emulation of their class, to outdo each other; far-fetched accounts of oppression, robbery, injustice, are framed, and the more drastic reformers invariably conclude that "Somebody" must be hanged. We never find out which "Somebody" we should suspend from the dismal tree; but none the less the virtuous reformers go on claiming victims for the sacrifice, while, as each discoverer solemnly proclaims his bloodthirsty remedy, he looks round for applause, and seems to say, "Did you ever hear of stern and audacious statesmanship like mine? Was there ever such a practical man?"

The farce is supremely funny in essentials, and yet I cannot laugh at it, for I know that the drolleries are played out amid sombre surroundings that should make the heart quake. While the hysterical newspaper people are venting abuse and coining theories, there are quiet workers in thousands who go on in uncomplaining steadfastness striving to remove a deadly shame from our civilisation, and smiling softly at the furious cries of folk who know so little and vociferate so much. After each whirlwind of sympathy has reached its full strength, there is generally a strong disposition among the sentimentalists to do something. No mere words for the genuine sentimentalist; he packs his sentimental self into a cab, he engages the services of a policeman, and he plunges into the nasty deeps of the City's misery. He treats each court and alley as a department of a menagerie, and he gazes with mild interest on the animals that he views. To the sentimentalist they are only animals; and he is kind to them as he would be to an ailing dog at home. If the sentimentalist's womenfolk go with him, the tour is made still more pleasing. The ladies shudder with terror as they trail their dainty skirts up noisome stairs; but their genteel cackle never ceases. "And you earn six shillings per week? How very surprising! And the landlord takes four shillings for your one room? How very mean! And you have—let me see—four from six leaves two—yes—you have two shillings a week to keep you and your three children? How charmingly shocking!" The honest poor go out to work; the wastrels stay at home and invent tales of woe; then, when the dusk falls on the foul court and all the sentimentalists have gone home to dinner, the woe-stricken tellers of harrowing tales creep out to the grimy little public-house at the top of the row; they spend the gifts of the sentimentalist; and, when the landlord draws out his brimming tills at midnight, he blesses the kind people who help to earn a snug income for him. I have seen forty-eight drunken people come out of a tavern between half-past eleven and half-past twelve in one night during the time when sentiment ran mad; there never were such roaring times for lazy and dissolute scoundrels; and nearly all the money given by the sentimentalists was spent in sowing crops of liver complaint or delirium tremens, and in filling the workhouses and the police-cells. Then the fit of charity died out; the clergyman and the "sisters" went on as usual in their sacredly secret fashion until a new outburst came. It seems strange to talk of Charity "raging"—it reminds us of Mr. Mantalini's savage lamb—but I can use no other word but "rage" to express these frantic gushes of affection for the poor. During one October month I carefully preserved and collated all the suggestions which were so liberally put forth in various London and provincial newspapers; and I observed that something like four hundred of these suggestions resolve themselves into a very few definite classes. The most sensible of these follow the lines laid down by Charles Dickens, and the writers say, "If you do not want the poor to behave like hogs, why do you house them like hogs? Clear away the rookeries; buy up the sites; pay reasonable compensation to those now interested in the miserable buildings, and then erect decent dwellings."

Now I do not want to confuse my readers by taking first a bead-roll of proposals, and then a bead-roll of arguments for and against, so I shall deal with each reformer's idea in the order of its importance. Before beginning, I must say that I differ from all the purveyors of the cheaper sort of sentiment; I differ from many ladies and gentlemen who talk about abstractions; and I differ most of all from the feather-brained persons who set up as authorities after they have paid flying visits in cabs to ugly neighbourhoods. When a specialist like Miss Octavia Hill speaks, we hear her with respect; but Miss Hill is not a sentimentalist; she is a keen, cool woman who has put her emotions aside, and who has gone to work in the dark regions in a kind of Napoleonic fashion. No fine phrases for her—nothing but fact, fact, fact. Miss Hill feels quite as keenly as the gushing persons; but she has regulated her feelings according to the environment in which her energies had to be exercised, and she has done more good than all the poetic creatures that ever raked up "cases" or made pretty phrases. I leave Miss Hill out of my reckoning, and I deal with the others. My conclusions may seem hard, and even cruel, but they are based on what I believe to be the best kindness, and they are supported by a somewhat varied experience. I shall waive the charge of cruelty in advance, and proceed to plain downright business.

You want to clear away rookeries and erect decent dwellings in their place? Good and beautiful! I sympathise with the intention, and I wish that it could be carried into effect instantly. Unhappily reforms of that sort cannot by any means be arranged on the instant, and certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they would have to be dislodged by degrees according to the means and the time of the authorities. Hard, is it not? But it is true. Certain kinds of cultured men like the life which they call "Bohemian." The Hopeless class like their peculiar Bohemianism, and they like it with all the gusto and content of their cultured brethren. Suppose you uproot a circle of rookeries. The inhabitants are scattered here and there, and they proceed to gain their living by means which may or may not be lawful. The decent law-abiding citizens who are turned out of house and home during the progress of reform suffer most. They are not inclined to become predatory animals; and, although they may have been used to live according to a very low human standard, they cannot all at once begin to live merely up to the standard of pigs. No writer dare tell in our English tongue the consequences of evicting the denizens of a genuine rookery for the purpose of substituting improvements; and I know only one French writer who would be bold enough to furnish cogent details to any civilised community. But, for argument's sake, let me suppose that your "rooks" are transferred from their nests to your model dwellings. I shall allow you to do all that philanthropy can dictate; I shall grant you the utmost powers that a government can bestow; and I shall give six months for your experiment. What will be found at the end of that time? Alas, your fine model dwellings will be in worse condition than the wigwam that the Apache and his squaw inhabit! Let a colony of "rooks" take possession of a sound, well-fitted building, and it will be found that not even the most stringent daily visitation will prevent utter wreck from being wrought. The pipes needed for all sanitary purposes will be cut and sold; the handles of doors and the brass-work of taps will be cut away; every scrap of wood-work available for fire-wood will be stolen sooner or later, and the people will relapse steadily into a state of filth and recklessness to be paralleled only among Australian and North American aborigines. Which of the sentimentalists has ever travelled to America with a few hundreds of Russian and Polish Jews, Saxon peasants, and Irish peasants from the West? That is the only experience capable of giving an idea of what happens when a fairly-fitted house is handed over to the tender mercies of a selection from the British "residuum." I shall be accused of talking the language of despair. I have never done that. I should like to see the time come when the poor may no more dwell in hovels like swine, and when a poverty-stricken inhabitant of London may not be brought up with ideas and habits coarser than those of a pig; I merely say that shrieking, impetuous sentimentalists go to work in the wrong way. They are the kind of people who would provide pigeon-cotes and dog-collars for the use of ferrets. I grant that the condition of many London streets is appalling; but make a house-to-house visitation, and see how the desolation is caused. Wanton, brutish destructiveness has been at work everywhere. The cistern which should supply a building cannot be fed because the spring, the hinge, and the last few yards of pipe have been chopped away and carried to a marine-store dealer; the landings and the floors are strewn with dirt which a smart, cleanly countrywoman would have cleared away without ten minutes' trouble. The very windows are robbed; and the whole set of inhabitants rests in contented, unspeakable squalor. No—something more is required than delicate, silky-handed reform; something more is required than ready-made blocks of neat dwellings; and something more is required than sighing sentimentalism, which looks at miserable effects without scrutinising causes. Let the sentimentalist mark this. If you transplant a colony of "rooks" into good quarters, you will have another rookery on your hands; if you remove a drove of brutes into reasonable human dwelling-places, you will soon have a set of homes fit for brutes and for brutes alone. Bricks and mortar and whitewash will not change the nature of human vermin; phrases about beauty and duty and loveliness will not affect the maker of slums, any more than perfumes or pretty colours would affect the rats that squirm under the foundations of the city. Does the sentimentalist imagine that the brick-and-mortar structures about which he wails were always centres of festering ugliness? If he has that fancy, let him take a glance at some of the quaint old houses of Southwark. They were clean and beautiful in their day, but the healthy human plant can no longer flourish in them, and the weed creeps in, the crawling parasite befouls their walls, and the structures which were lovely when Chaucer's pilgrims started from the "Tabard" are abominable now. If English folk of gentle and cleanly breeding had lived on in those ancient places, they would have been wholesome and sound like many another house erected in days gone by; but the weed gradually took root, and now the ugliest dens in London are found in the places where knights and trim clerks and gracious dames once lived. In the face of all these things, how strangely unwise it is to fancy that ever the Forlorn Army can be saved by bricks and mortar!

Education? Ah, there comes a pinch—and a very severe pinch it is! About five or six years since some of the most important thoroughfares in London, Liverpool, and many great towns have been rendered totally impassable by the savage proceedings of gangs of young roughs. Certain districts in Liverpool could not be traversed after dark, and the reason was simply this—any man or woman of decent appearance was liable to be first of all surrounded by a carefully-picked company of blackguards; then came the clever trip-up from behind; then the victim was left to be robbed; and then the authorities wrung their hands and said that it was a pity, and that everything should be done. The Liverpool youths went a little too far, and one peculiarly obnoxious set of rascals were sent to penal servitude, while the leader of a gang of murderers went to the gallows. But in London we have such sights every night as never were matched in the most turbulent Italian cities at times when the hot Southern blood was up; our great English capital can match Venice, Rome, Palermo, Turin, or Milan in the matter of stabbing; and, for mere wanton cruelty and thievishness, I imagine that Hackney Road or Gray's Inn Road may equal any thoroughfare of Francois Villon's Paris. These turbulent London mobs that make night hideous are made up of youths who have tasted the full blessings of our educational system; they were mostly mere infants when the great measure was passed which was to regenerate all things, and yet the London of Swift's time was not much worse than the Southwark or Hackney of our own day. I never for an instant dispute the general advance which our modern society has made, and I dislike the gruesome rubbish talked of the good old times; but I must nevertheless point out that "fancy" building and education are not the main factors which have aided in making us better and more seemly. The brutal rough remains, and the gangs of scamps who infest London in various spots are quite as bad as the beings whom Hogarth drew. They have all been forced into the Government schools; all of them have learned to read and write, and not one was suffered to leave school until he had reached the age of fourteen years or passed a moderately high standard according to the Code. Still, we have this monstrous army of the Hopeless Poor, and they are usually massed with the Hopeful Poor—the poor who attend the People's Palaces, and institutes, and so forth. Alas, the Hopeless Poor are not to be dismissed with a light phrase—they are not to be dealt with by mere pretty words! They are creatures who remain poor and villainous because they choose to be poor and villainous; so pity and nice theories will not cure them. The best of us yearn toward the good poor folk, and we find a healthful joy in aiding them; but we have a set of very different feelings towards the Evil Brigade.



XIII.

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

When I talked[2] of the hopeless poor and of degraded men, I had in my mind only the feeble or detestable adults who degrade our civilisation; but I have by no means forgotten the unhappy little souls who develop into wastrels unless they are taken away from hideous surroundings which cramp vitality, destroy all childish happiness, and turn into brutes poor young creatures who bear the human image. Lately I heard one or two little stories which are amongst the most pathetic that ever came before me in the course of some small experience of life among the forsaken classes—or rather let me say, the classes that used to be forsaken. These little stories have prompted me to endeavour to deal carefully with a matter which has cost me many sad thoughts.

[2] Essay XII.

A stray child was rescued from the streets by a society which is extending its operations very rapidly, and the little creature was placed as a boarder with a cottager in the country. To the utter amazement of the good rustic folk, their queer little guest showed complete ignorance of the commonest plants and animals; she had never seen any pretty thing, and she was quite used to being hungry and to satisfying her appetite with scraps of garbage. When she first saw a daisy on the green, she gazed longingly, and then asked plaintively, "Please, might I touch that?" When she was told that she might pluck a few daisies she was much delighted. After her first experiences in the botanising line she formally asked permission to pluck many wild flowers; but she always seemed to have a dread of transgressing against some dim law which had been hitherto represented to her mind by the man in blue who used to watch over her miserable alley. Before she became accustomed to receiving food at regular intervals, she fairly touched the hearts of her foster-parents by one queer request. The housewife was washing some Brussels sprouts, when the little stray said timidly, "Please, may I eat a bit of that stalk?" Of course the stringy mass was uneatable; but it turned out that the forlorn child had been very glad to worry at the stalks from the gutter as a dog does at an unclean bone. Another little girl was taken from the den which she knew as home, after her parents had been sent to prison for treating her with unspeakable cruelty. The matron of the country home found that the child's body was scarred from neck to ankle in a fashion which no lapse of years could efface. The explanation of the disfigurement was very simple. "If I didn't bring in any money mother beat me first; and then, when father came in drunk, she tied my hands behind my back and told him to give me the buckle. Then they strapped me on the bed and fastened my feet, and he whacked me with the buckle-end of his strap." It sounds very horrible, does it not? Nevertheless, the facts remain that the wretched parents were caught in the act and convicted, and that the child must carry her scars to her grave. No one who has not seen these lost children can form an idea of their darkness and helplessness of mind. We all know the story of the South Sea islanders, who said, "What a big pig!" when they first saw a horse; one little London savage quite equalled this by remarking, "What a little cow!" when she saw a tiny Maltese terrier brought by a lady missionary. The child had some vague conception regarding a cow; but, like others of her class, her notions of size, form, and colour, were quite cloudy. Another of these city phenomena did not know how to blow out a candle; and in many cases it is most difficult to persuade those newly reclaimed to go to bed without keeping their boots on. We cannot call such beings barbarians, because "barbarian" implies something wild, strong, and even noble; yet, to our shame, we must call them savages, and we must own that they are born and bred within easy gunshot distance of our centres of culture, enlightenment, and luxury. They swarm, do these children of suffering: and easy-going people have no idea of the density of the savagery amid which such scions of our noble English race are reared. A gentleman once offered sixpence to a little girl who appeared before him dressed in a single garment which seemed to have been roughly made from some sort of sacking. He expected to see her snatch at the coin with all the eagerness of the ordinary hardy street-arab; but she showed her jagged brown teeth, and said huskily, "No! Big money!" A lady, divining with the rapid feminine instinct what was meant by the enigmatic muttering, explained, "She does not know the sixpence. She has had coppers to spend before." And so it turned out to be.

Perhaps comfortable, satisfied readers may be startled, or even offended, if I say that there are young creatures in our great cities who rarely see even the light of day, save when the beams are filtered through the reek of a court; and these same infants resemble the black fellows of Western Australia or the Troglodytes of Africa in general intelligence. I have little heart to speak of the parents who are answerable for such horrors of crass neglect and cruelty. By laying a set of dry police reports before any sensitive person I could make that person shudder without adding a word of rhetoric; for it would be seen that the popular picture of a fiend represents rather a mild and harmless entity if we compare it with the foul-souled human beings who dwell in our benighted places. What is to be done? It is best to grapple swiftly with an ugly question; and I do not hesitate to attack deliberately one of the most delicate puzzles that ever came before the world. Wise emotionless men may say, and do say, "Are you going to relieve male and female idlers and drunkards of all anxiety regarding their offspring? Do you mean to discourage the honest but poverty-stricken parents who do their best for their children? What kind of world will you make for us all if you give your aid to the worst and neglect the good folk?" Those are very awkward questions, and I can answer them only by a sort of expedient which must not be mistaken for intellectual conjuring; I drop ordinary logic and theories of probability and go at once to facts. At first sight it seems like rank folly for any man or body of men to take charge of a child which has been neglected by shameless parents; but, on the other hand, let us consider our own self-interest, and leave sentiment alone for a while. We cannot put the benighted starvelings into a lethal chamber and dispose of their brief lives in that fashion; we are bound to maintain them in some way or other—and the ratepayers of St. George's-in-the-East know to some trifling extent what that means. If the waifs grow up to be predatory animals, we must maintain them first of all in reformatories, and afterwards, at intervals during their lives, in prisons. If they grow up without shaking off the terrible mental darkness of their starveling childhood, we must provide for them in asylums. A thoroughly neglected waif costs this happy country something like fifteen pounds per year for the term of his natural life. Very good. At this point some hard-headed person says, "What about the workhouses?" This brings us face to face with another astounding problem to solve which at all satisfactorily requires no little research and thought. I know that there are good workhouses; but I happen to know that there are also bad ones. In many a ship and fishing-vessel fine fellows may be met with who were sent out early from workhouse-schools and wrought their way onward until they became brave and useful seamen; there are also many industrious well-conducted girls who came originally from the great Union schools. But, when I take another side of the picture, I am inclined to say very fervently, "Anything rather than the workhouse system for children! Anything short of complete neglect!" Observe that in one of the overgrown schools the young folk are scarcely treated as human; their individuality—if they have any to begin with—is soon lost; they are known only by a number, and they are passed into the outer world like bundles of shot rubbish. There are seamen who have never cast off the peculiar workhouse taint—and no worse shipmates ever afflicted any capable and honourable soul: for these Union weeds carry the vices of Rob the Grinder and Noah Claypole on to blue water, and show themselves to be hounds who would fawn or snarl, steal or talk saintliness, lie or sneak just as interest suited them. Then the workhouse girls: I have said sharp words about cruel mistresses; but I frankly own that the average lady who is saddled with the average workhouse servant has some slight reasons for showing acerbity, though she has none for practising cruelty. How could anybody expect a girl to turn out well after the usual course of workhouse training? The life of the soul is too often quenched; the flame of life in the poor body is dim and low; and the mechanical morality, the dull, meaningless round of useless lessons, the habit of herding in unhealthy rooms with unhealthy companions, all tend to develop a creature which can be regarded only as one of Nature's failures, if I may parody a phrase of the superlative Beau Brummel's.

There is another and darker side to the workhouse question, but I shall skim it lightly. The women whose conversation the young girls hear are often wicked, and thus a dull, under-fed, inept child may have a great deal too much knowledge of evil. Can we expect such a collection to contain a large percentage of seemly and useful children? Is it a fact that the Unions usually supply domestics worth keeping? Ask the mistresses, and the answer will not be encouraging. No; the workhouse will not quite suffice. What we want to do is to take the waifs and strays into places where they may lead a natural and healthy life. Get them clear of the horror of the slums, let them breathe pure air and learn pure and simple habits, and then, instead of odious and costly human weeds, we may have wholesome, useful fellow-citizens, who not only will cost us nothing, but who will be a distinct source of solid profit to the empire. The thing has been and is being done steadily by good men and women who defy prejudice and go to work in a vigorous practical way. The most miserable and apparently hopeless little creatures from the filthy purlieus of great towns become gradually bright and healthy and intelligent when they are taken to their natural home—the country—and cut adrift from the congested centres of population. The cost of their maintenance is at first a little over the workhouse figure; but then the article produced for the money is far and away superior to anything turned out by any workhouse. The rescued children are eagerly sought after in the Colonies; and I am not aware of any case in which one of the young emigrants has expressed discontent. How much better it is to see these poor waifs changed into useful, profitable colonists than to have them sullenly, uselessly starving in the dens of London and Liverpool and Manchester! The work of rescuing and training the lost children has not been fully developed yet; but enough has been done to show that in a few years we shall have a large number of prosperous Colonial farmers who will indirectly contribute to the wealth of mighty Britain. Had the trained emigrants never been snatched away from the verge of the pit, we should have been obliged to maintain them until their wretched lives ended with sordid deaths, and the very cost of their burial would have come from the pockets of pinched workers. I fancy that I have shown the advisability of neglecting strict economic canons in this instance. I abhor the pestilent beings who swarm in certain quarters, and I should never dream of removing any burden from their shoulders if I thought that it would only leave the rascals with more money to expend on brutish pleasures; but I desire to look far ahead, and I can see that, when the present generation of adult wastrels dies out, it will be a very good thing for all of us if there are few or none of the same stamp ready to take their places. By resolutely removing the children of vice and sorrow, we clear the road for a better race. Let it be understood that I have a truly orthodox dread of "pauperisation," and I watch very jealously the doings of those who are anxious to feed all sorts and conditions of men; but pauperising men by maintaining them in laziness is very different from rearing useful subjects of the empire, whose trained labour is a source of profit and whose developed morality is a fund of security. We cannot take Chinese methods of lessening the pressure of population, and we must at once decide on the wisest way of dealing with our waifs and strays; if we do not, then the chances are that they will deal unpleasantly with us. The locust, the lemming, the phylloxera, are all very insignificant creatures; but, when they act together in numbers, they can very soon devastate a district. The parable is not by any means inapt.



XIV.

STAGE-CHILDREN.

The Modern Legislator is a most terrible creature. When he is not engaged in obstructing public business, he must needs be meddling with other people's private affairs—and some of us want to know where he is going to stop. The Legislator has decreed that no children who are less than ten years of age shall henceforth be allowed to perform on the stage. Much of the talk which came from those who carried the measure was kindly and sensible; but some of the acrid party foisted mere misleading rubbish on the public. Henceforth the infantile player will be seen no more. Mr. Crummles will wave a stern hand from the shades where the children of dreams dwell, and the Phenomenon will be glad that she has passed from a prosaic earth. Had the stern law-makers had their way thirty years ago, how many pretty sights should we have missed! Little Marie Wilton would not have romped about the stage in her childish glee (she enjoyed the work from the first, and even liked playing in a draughty booth when the company of roaming "artists" could get no better accommodation). Little Ellen Terry, too, would not have played in the Castle scene in "King John," and crowds of worthy matrons would have missed having that "good cry" which they enjoy so keenly. We are happy who saw all the Terrys, and Marie the witty who charmed Charles Dickens, and all the pretty mites who did so delight us when Mme. Katti Lanner marshalled them. Does any reader wish to have a perfectly pleasant half-hour? Let that reader get the number of "Fors Clavigera" which contains Mr. Ruskin's description of the children who performed in the Drury Lane pantomime. The kind critic was in ecstasies—as well he might be—and he talked with enthusiasm about the cleanliness, the grace, the perfectly happy discipline of the tiny folk. Then, again, in "Time and Tide," the great writer gives us the following exquisite passage about a little dancer who especially pleased him—"She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence in the finish and strength of her motion that she had been put to continual torture during half of her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child—well taught, but painlessly—might do; she caricatured no older person, attempted no curious or fantastic skill; she was dressed decently, she moved decently, she looked and behaved innocently, and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness." How perfect! There is not much suggestion of torture or premature wickedness in all this; and I wish that the wise and good man's opinion might have been considered for a little while by some of the reformers. For my part, I venture to offer a few remarks about the whole matter; for there are several considerations which were neglected by the debaters on both sides during the discussion.

First, then, I must solemnly say that I cannot advise any grown girl or young man to go upon the stage; and yet I see no harm in teaching little children to perform concerted movements in graceful ways. This sounds like a paradox; but it is not paradoxical at all to those who have studied the question from the inside. If a girl waits until she is eighteen before going on the stage, she has a good chance of being thrown into the company of women who do not dream of respecting her. If she enters a provincial travelling company, she has constant discomfort and constant danger; some of her companions are certain to be coarse—and a brutal actor whose professional vanity prevents him from understanding his own brutality is among the most horrible of living creatures. After a lady has made her mark as an actress, she can secure admirable lodging at good hotels; but a poor girl with a pound per week must put up with such squalor as only actors can fittingly describe. Amid all this the girl is left to take care of herself—observe that point. A little child is taken care of; whereas the adolescent or adult must fight her way through a grimy and repulsive environment as best she can. There is not a man in the world who would dare to introduce himself informally to any lady who is employed under Mr. W.S. Gilbert's superintendence; but what can we say about the thousands who travel from town to town unguided save by the curt directions of the stage manager? Let it be understood that when I speak of the theatre I have not in mind the beautiful refined places in central London where cultured people in the audience are entertained by cultured people on the stage; I am thinking grimly of the squalor, the degradation, the wretched hand-to-mouth existence of poor souls who work in the casual companies that spend the better part of their existence in railway carriages. Not long ago a young actress who can now command two thousand pounds per year was obliged to remain dinnerless on Christmas Day because she could not afford to pay a shilling for a hamper which was sent her from home. Her success in the lottery arrived by a strange chance; but how many bear all the poverty and trouble without even having one gleam of success in their miserable dangerous lives? There are theatres and theatres—there are managers and managers; but in some places the common conversation of the women is not edifying—and a good girl must insensibly lose her finer nature if she has to associate with such persons.

In the case of the little children there are none, or few, at any rate, of the drawbacks. Not one in fifty goes on the stage; the mites are engaged only at certain seasons; and their harvest-time enables poor people to obtain many little comforts and necessaries. Further, there is one curious thing which may not be known to the highly particular sect—no manager, actor, or actress would use a profane or coarse word among the children; such an offender would be scouted by the roughest member of any company and condemned by the very stage-carpenters. I own that I have sometimes wished that a child here and there could be warm asleep on a chilly night, especially when the young creature was perilously suspended from a wire; but that is very nearly the furthest extent of my pity. So long as the youngsters are not required to perform dangerous or unnatural feats, they need no pity. Instead of being inured to brutalities, they are actually taken away from brutality—for no man or woman would sully their minds. We have heard it said that the stage-children who return to school after their spell of pantomime corrupt the others. This is a gross and stupid falsehood which is calculated to injure a cause that has many good points. I earnestly sympathise with the well-meaning people who desire to succour the little ones; but I beseech them not to be led away by misstatements which are concocted for sensational purposes. So far from corrupting other children, the young actors invariably act as a good influence in a school. The experienced observer can almost make certain of picking out the boys and girls who have had a stage-training. They like to be smart and cleanly, their deportment and general manners are improved, and they are almost invariably superior in intelligence to the ordinary school-trained child. Imagine Mme. Katti Lanner having a corrupt influence! Imagine those delightful beings who play "Alice in Wonderland" corrupting anybody or anything! I have always been struck by the pretty manners of the trained children—and the advance in refinement is especially noticeable among those who have been speaking or singing parts. The most pleasing set of youths that I ever met were the members of a comic-opera troupe. Some of them, without an approach to freedom of manner, would converse with good sense on many topics, and their drill had been so extended as to include a knowledge of polite salutes. Not one of the boys or girls would have been ill at ease in a drawing-room; and I found their educational standard quite up to that of any Board school known to me. These nice little folk were certainly in no wise pallid or distraught; and, when they danced on the stage, the performance was a beautiful and delightful romp which suggested no idea of pain. To see the "prima donna" of the company trundling her hoop on a bright morning was as pretty a sight as one would care to see. The little lady was neither forward nor unhealthy, nor anything else that is objectionable—and it was plain that she enjoyed her life. Is it in the least likely that any sane manager would ill-treat a little child that was required to be pleasing? One or two acrobats have been known to be stern with their apprentices; but the rudest circus-man would not venture to exhibit a pupil who looked unhappy. The rascally "Arabs" who entrapped so many boys in years gone by were fiends who met with very appropriate retribution; but such villains are not common.

I am always haunted by the argument about late hours—and give it every weight. As aforesaid, I used sometimes to wish that some wee creature could only be wrapped in a night-gown and sent to rest. But, for the benefit of those who cannot well imagine what the horrors of a city slum are like, let me describe the nightly scene in a typical city alley. It is cold in the pantomime season; but the folk in that alley have not much fire. Joe, the costermonger, Bill, the market-labourer, Tom, the fish-porter, and the rest come home in a straggling way; and, if they can buy a pennyworth of coal, they boil the little kettle. Then one of the children runs to the chandler's and gets a halfpennyworth of tea, a scrap of bread, and perhaps a penny slice of sausage. The men stint themselves in food and firing; but they always have a little to spare for gin and beer and tobacco. There is no light in the evil-smelling room; but there is a place at the corner of the alley where the gas is burning as cheerily as the foul wreaths of smoke will permit. The men go out and squat on barrels in the hideous bar; then they call for some liquor which may be warranted to take speedy effect; then they smoke, and try to forget.

What is the little child to do? Go to bed? Why, it has no bed! If it were earning a little money, its parents might be able to provide a flock or straw bed with some sort of covering; but the poverty of these people is so gnawing and dire that very few lodgings contain anything which could possibly be pawned for twopence. Usually the child seeks the streets; and in the dim and filthy haze he or she sports at large with other ragged companions. Then the women—the match-box makers, trouser-makers, and such like—begin to troop in—and they gravitate towards the gin-shop. The darkness deepens; the bleared lamps blare in the dirty mist; the hoarse roar from the public-house comes forth accompanied by choking wafts of reek; the abominable tramps move towards the lodging-house and pollute the polluted air further with the foulness of their language; the drink mounts into unstable heads; and presently—especially on Saturday nights—there are hoarse growls as from rough-throated beasts, shrill shrieks, and a running chorus of indescribable grossness. Drunken men are quarrelling in the street, drunken women yell and stagger, and the hideous discord fills the night on all sides. No item of corruption is spared the children; and the vile hurly-burly ceases only at midnight. The children will always try to sneak through the swinging doors of the gin inferno when the cold becomes too severe; and they will remain crouched like rats until some capricious guest sends them out with an oath and a kick. There is not one imaginable horror that does not become familiar to these children of despair—and they sometimes have a very good chance of seeing murder. When the last hour comes, and the father and mother return to their dusky den, the child crouches anywhere on the floor; undressing is not practised; and, if any sentimental person will first of all go into a common Board school in a non-theatrical quarter on a wet afternoon, and if he will then drive on and pass through a few hundreds of the theatrical children, his "olfactories" will teach him a lesson which may make him think a good deal.

Now let me put a question or two in the name of common sense. We must balance good and evil; and, granting that the theatre has a tendency to make children light-minded, is it worse than the horror of the slums and the stench and darkness of the single room where a family herd together? The youngster who is engaged at the theatre can set off home at the very latest as soon as the harlequinade is over. Very well; suppose it is late. Would he or she be early if the night were spent in the alley? Not at all! Then the child from the theatre is bathed, fed, taught, clothed nicely, and it gives its parents a little money which procures food. Some say the extra money goes for extra gin—and that may happen in some cases; but, at any rate, the child's earnings usually purchase a share of food as well as of drink; for the worst blackguard in the world dares not send a starveling to meet the stage-manager. In sum, then, making every possible allowance for the good intentions of those who wish to rescue children from the theatre, I am inclined to fear that they have been hasty. I am not without some knowledge of the various details of the subject; and I have tried to give my judgment as fairly as I could—for I also pity and love the children.



XV.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY: PAST AND PRESENT.

Certain enterprising persons have contributed of late years to make English newspapers somewhat unpleasant reading, and mournful men are given to moaning over the growth of national corruption. So persistent have the mournful folk been, that many good simple people are in a state of grievous alarm, for they are persuaded that the nation is bound towards the pit of Doom. When doleful men and women cry out concerning abstract evils, it is always best to meet them with hard facts, and I therefore propose to show that we ought really to be very grateful for the undoubted advance of the nation toward righteousness. Hideous blots there are—ugly cankers amid our civilisation—but we grow better year by year, and the general movement is towards honesty, helpfulness, goodness, purity. Whenever any croaker begins speaking about the golden age that is gone, I advise my readers to try a system of cross-examination. Ask the sorrowful man to fix the precise period of the golden age, and pin him to direct and definite statements. Was it when labourers in East Anglia lived like hogs around the houses of their lords? Was it when the starving and utterly wretched thousands marched on London under Tyler and John Ball? Was it when the press-gangs kidnapped good citizens in broad daylight? Was it when a score of burning ricks might be seen in a night by one observer? Was it when imbecile rulers had set all the world against us—when the French threatened Ireland, and the maddened, hunger-bitten sailors were in wild rebellion, and the Funds were not considered as safe for investors? The croaker is always securely indefinite, and a strict, vigorous series of questions reduces him to rage and impotence.

Now let us go back, say, one hundred and twenty years, and let us see how the sovereign, the legislators, the aristocracy, and the people fared then; the facts may perchance be instructive. The King had resolved to be absolute, and his main energies were devoted to bribing Parliament. With his own royal hand he was not ashamed to write, enclosing what he called "gold pills," which were to be used in corrupting his subjects. He was a most moral, industrious, cleanly man in private life; yet when the Duke of Grafton, his Prime Minister, appeared near the royal box of the theatre, accompanied by a woman of disreputable character, his Majesty made no sign. He was satisfied if he could keep the mighty Burke, the high-souled Rockingham, the brilliant Charles James Fox, out of his counsels, and he did not care at all about the morals or the general behaviour of his Ministers. About a quarter of a million was spent by the Crown in buying votes and organising corruption, and King George III. was never ashamed to appear before his Parliament in the character of an insolvent debtor when he needed money to sap the morals of his people. A movement in the direction of purity began even in George III.'s own lifetime; he was obliged to be cautious, and he ended by coming under the iron domination of William Pitt. Thus, instead of being remembered as the dangerous, obstinate, purblind man who made Parliament a sink of foulness, and who lost America, he is mentioned as a comfortable simple gentleman of the farmer sort. Before we can half understand the vast purification that has been wrought, we must study the history of the reign from 1765 to 1784, and then we may feel happy as we compare our gentle, beneficent Sovereign with the unscrupulous blunderer who fought the Colonists and all but lost the Empire.

Then consider the Ministers who carried out the Sovereign's behest. There was "Jemmy Twitcher," as Lord Sandwich was called. This man was so utterly bad, that in later life he never cared to conceal his infamies, because he knew that his character could not possibly be worse blackened. Sandwich belonged to the unspeakable Medmenham Abbey set. The lovely ruin had been bought and renovated by a gang of rakes, who converted it into an abode of drunkenness and grossness; they defaced the sacred trees and the grey walls with inscriptions which the indignation of a purer age has caused to be removed; they carried on nightly revels which no historian could describe, and in their wicked buffoonery mocked the Creator with burlesque religious rites. Such an unholy place would be pulled down by the mob nowadays, and the gang of debauchees would figure in the police-court; but in those "good old times" the Prime Minister and the Secretary to the Admiralty were merry members of a crew that disgraced humanity. Just six weeks after Lord Sandwich had joined the Medmenham Abbey gang, he put himself forward for election to the High Stewardship of Cambridge University. Here was a pretty position! The man had been thus described by a poet—

"Too infamous to have a friend, Too bad for bad men to commend Or good to name; beneath whose weight Earth groans; who hath been spared by fate Only to show on mercy's plan How far and long God bears with man"—

and this superb piece of truculence was received with applause by all that was upright and noble in England. This indescribable villain presented himself as worthy to preside over the place where the flower of English youth were educated. A pleasing example he offered to young and ardent souls! Worst of all, he was elected. He adroitly gained the votes of country clergymen; he begged his friends to solicit the votes of their private chaplains; he dodged and manoeuvred until he gained his position. One voter came from a lunatic asylum, another was brought from the Isle of Man, others were bribed in lavish fashion—and Sandwich presided over Cambridge. The students rose in a body and walked out when he came among them; but that mattered little to the brazen fellow. To complete the ghastly comedy, it happened that four years later the Chancellorship fell vacant, and the Duke of Grafton, who was only second to "Jemmy Twitcher" in wickedness, was chosen for the high office.

Now I ask plainly, "Can the croakers declare that England was better under Grafton and 'Jemmy Twitcher' than she now is?" It is nonsense! The crew of bacchanals and blackguards who then flaunted in high places would not now be tolerated for a day. I look on our governing class now,[3] and I may safely declare that not more than one Cabinet Minister during the past twenty years has been regarded as otherwise than stainless in character. What is the meaning of this transformation? It means that good, pure women have gained their rightful influence, that men have grown purer, and that the elevation of the general body of society has been reflected in the character of the men chosen to rule. Vice is all too powerful, and the dark corners of our cities are awful to see; but the worst of the "fast" men in modern England are not so bad as were the governors of a mighty empire when George III. was king.

[3] 1886.

If we look at the society that diced and drank and squandered health and fortune in the times which we mention, we are more than ever struck with the advance made. It is a literal fact that the correspondence of the young men mainly refers to drink and gaming, the correspondence of the middle-aged men to gout. There were few of the educated classes who reached middle age, and a country squire was reckoned quite a remarkable person if he could still walk and ride when he attained to fifty years. The quiet, steady middle-class certainly lived more temperately; but the intemperance of the aristocracy was indescribable. The leader of the House of Lords imbibed until six every morning, was carried to bed, and came down about two in the afternoon; two noblemen declared that they drank a gallon and a half of Champagne and Burgundy at one sitting; in some coffee-houses it was the custom, when the night's drinking ended, for the company to burn their wigs. Some of Horace Walpole's letters prove plainly enough that great gentlemen conducted themselves occasionally very much as wild seamen would do in Shadwell or the Highway. What would be thought if Lord Salisbury reeled into the House in a totally drunken condition? The imagination cannot conceive the situation, and the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for he had but few associates to bribe. When patrols were set to guard the Treasury at night, an epigram ran—

"From the night till the morning 'tis true all is right; But who will secure it from morning till night?"

There was a perfect carnival of robbery and corruption, and the people paid for all. Money gathered by public corruption was squandered in private debauchery, while a sullen and helpless nation looked on. Think of the change! A Minister now toils during seventeen hours per day, and receives less than a successful barrister. He must give up all the ordinary pleasures of life; and, in recompense for the sacrifice, he can claim but little patronage. By most of the men in office the work is undertaken on purely patriotic grounds; so that a duke with a quarter of a million per year is content to labour like an attorney's clerk.

If we think about the ladies of the old days, we are more than ever driven to reflection. It is impossible to imagine a more insensate collection of gamblers than the women of Horace Walpole's society. Well-bred harpies won and lost fortunes, and the vice became a raging pest. A young politician could not further his own prospects better than by letting some high-born dame win his money; if the youth won the lady's money, then a discreet forgetfulness of the debt was profitable to him. The rattle of dice and the shuffle of cards sounded wherever two or three fashionable persons were gathered together; men and women quarrelled, and society became a mere jumble of people who suspected and hated and thought to rob each other. It is horrible, even at this distance of time, to think of those rapacious beings who forgot literature, art, friendship, and family affection for the sake of high play. One weary, witty debauchee said, "Play wastes time, health, money, and friendship;" yet he went on pitting his skill against that of unsexed women and polished rogues.

The morality of the fair gamblers was more than loose. It was taken for granted in the whole set that every female member of it must inevitably be divorced, if the catastrophe had not occurred already; and one man asked Walpole, "Who's your proctor?" just as he would have asked, "Who's your tailor?" An unspeakable society—a hollow, heartless, callous, wicked brood. Compare that crew of furious money-grabbers with our modern gentlemen and ladies! We have our faults—crime and vice flourish; but, from the Court down to the simplest middle-class society in our provincial towns, the spread of seemliness and purity is distinctly marked. Some insatiable grumblers will have it that our girls and women are deteriorating, and we are informed that the taste for objectionable literature is keener than it used to be. It is a distinct libel. No one save a historian would now read the corrupting works of Mrs. Aphra Behn; and yet it is a fact that those novels were read aloud among companies of ladies. A man winces now if he is obliged to turn to them; the girls in the "good old times" heard them with never a blush. Wherever we turn we find the same steady advance. Can any creature be more dainty, more sweet, more pure, than the ordinary English girl of our day? Will any one bring evidence to show that the girls of the last century, or of any other, were superior to our own maidens? No evidence has been produced from literature, from journals, from family correspondence, and I am pretty certain that no evidence exists. Practically speaking, the complaints of the decline of morality are merely uttered as a mode of showing the talker's own superiority.



XVI.

"RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS."

It is really most kind on the part of certain good people to reorganise the amusements of the people; but, as each reorganiser fancies himself to be the only man who has the right notion, it follows that matters are becoming more and more complicated. For example, to begin with literature, a simple person who has no taste for profundities likes to read the old sort of stories about love's pretty fever; the simple person wants to hear about the trials and crosses of true lovers, the defeat of villains—to enjoy the kindly finish where faith and virtue are rewarded, and where the unambitious imagination may picture the coming of a long life of homely toil and homely pleasure. Perhaps the simple personage has a taste for dukes—I know of one young person aged thirteen who will not write a romance of her own without putting her hero at the very summit of the peerage—or wicked baronets, or marble halls. These tastes are by no means confined to women; sailors in far-away seas most persistently beguile their scanty leisure by studying tales of sentiment, and soldiers are, if possible, more eager than seamen for that sort of reading. The righteous organiser comes on the scene, and says, "We must not let these poor souls fritter away any portion of their lives on frivolities. Let us give them less of light literature and more of the serious work which may lead them to strive toward higher things." The aggressively righteous individual has a most eccentric notion of what constitutes "light" literature; he never thinks that Shakspere is decidedly "light," and I rather fancy that he would regard Aristophanes as heavy. If one were to suggest, on his proposing to place the Irving Shakspere on the shelves of a free library, that the poet is often foolish, often a buffoon of a low type, often a mere quibbler, and often ribald, he might perhaps have a fit, or he might inquire if the speaker were mad—assuredly he would do something impressive; but he would not scruple to deliver an oration of the severest type if some sweet and innocent story of love and tenderness and old-fashioned sentiment were proposed. As for the lady who dislikes "light" literature, she is a subject for laughter among the gods. To see such an one present a sensible workman with a pamphlet entitled "Who Paid for the Mangle?—or, Maria's Pennies," is to know what overpowering joy means. Yet the severe and strait-laced censors are not perhaps so much of a nuisance as the sternly-cultured and emotional persons who "yearn" a great deal. The "yearnest" man or woman always has an ideal which is usually the vaguest thing in the cloudland of metaphysics. I fancy it means that one must always be hankering after something which one has not and keeping a look of sorrow when one's hankering is fruitless. The feeling of pity with which a "yearnest" one regards somebody who cares only for pleasant and simple or pathetic books is very creditable; but it weighs on the average human being. Why on earth should a girl leave the tenderness of "The Mill on the Floss" and rise to "Daniel Deronda's" elevated but barren and abhorrent level? There are people capable of advising girls to read such a literary production as "Robert Elsmere"; and this advice reveals a capacity for cruelty worthy of an inquisitor. Then we are bidden to leave the unpolished utterances of frank love and jealousy and fear and anger in order that we may enjoy the peculiar works of art which have come from America of late. In these enthralling fictions all the characters are so exceedingly refined that they can talk only by hints, and sometimes the hints are very long. But the explanations of the reasons for giving the said hints are still longer; and, when once the author starts off to tell why Crespigny Conyers of Conyers Magna, England, stumbled against the music-stool prepared for the reception of Selina Fogg, Bones Co., Mass., one never knows whether the fifth, the twelfth, or the fortieth page of the explanation will bring him up. There is no doubt but that these things are refined in their way. The British peer and the beautiful American girl hint away freely through three volumes; and it is understood that they either go through the practical ceremony of getting married at the finish, or decline into the most delicately-finished melancholy that resignation, or more properly, renunciation can produce. Yet the atmosphere in which they dwell is sickly to the sound soul. It is as if one were placed in an orchid house full of dainty and rare plants, and kept there until the quiet air and the light scents overpowered every faculty. In all the doings of these superfine Americans and Frenchmen and Britons and Italians there is something almost inhuman; the record of a strong speech, a blow, a kiss would be a relief, and one young and unorthodox person has been known to express an opinion to the effect that a naughty word would be quite luxurious. The lovers whom we love kiss when they meet or part, they talk plainly—unless the girls play the natural and delightful trick of being coy—and they behave in a manner which human beings understand. Supposing that the duke uses a language which ordinary dukes do not affect save in moments of extreme emotion, it is not tiresome, and, at the worst, it satisfies a convention which has not done very much harm. Now on what logical ground can we expect people who were nourished on a literature which is at all events hearty even when it chances to be stupid—on what grounds can the organisers of improvement expect an English man or woman to take a sudden fancy to the diaphanous ghosts of the new American fiction? I dislike out-of-the-way words, and so perhaps, instead of "diaphanous ghosts," I had better say "transparent wraiths," or "marionettes of superfine manufacture," or anything the reader likes that implies frailty and want of human resemblance. It all comes to the same thing; the individuals who recommend a change of literature as they might recommend a change of air do not know the constitutions of the patients for whom they prescribe. It has occurred to me that a delightful comedy scene might be witnessed if one of the badgered folk who are to be "raised" were to say on a sudden, "In the name of goodness, how do you know that my literature is not better than yours? Why should I not raise you? When you tell me that these nicely-dressed ladies and gentlemen, who only half say anything they want to say and who never half do anything, are polished and delightful, and so on, I grant that they are so to you, and I do not try to upset your judgment. But your judgment and my taste are two very different things; and, when I use my taste, I find your heroes and heroines very consummate bores; so I shall keep to my own old favourites." Who could blame the person who uttered those very awkward protests? The question to me is—Who need most to be dealt with—those who are asked to learn some new thing, or those who have learned the new thing and show signs that they would be better if they could forget it? I should not have much hesitation in giving an answer.

Then, as to public amusements, we have to look quite as closely and distrustfully at the action of the reformers as we have at the action of the kind gentlefolk who are going to give us "Daniel Deronda" and the highly entertaining works of Mr. William Deans Howells in place of the dear welcome stories that pass away the long hours. Let it be understood that I do not wish to say one word likely to be construed into a jeer at real culture; but I must, as a matter of mercy, say something in defence of those who cannot understand or win emotions from such things as classical music or the "advanced" drama. Pray, in pity's name, what is to be said against the commonplace man who hears an accomplished musician play Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin in his—the commonplace one's—drawing-room, and who says in agony, "Very fine! Very deep! Very profound—profound indeed, sir! Full of breadth and symmetry and that sort of thing! Now do you think we might vary that noble masterpiece with a waltz?" Can we blame the poor fellow? Wagner represents a noise to him, and the awful scorn and despair of the first movement in the "Moonlight Sonata" only lead him to say, "Heavy play with that left hand. Can't he go faster over the treble, or whatever they call it?" He wants intelligible musical ideas, and we have no right to begin "level-raising" with the unhappy and remonstrant man. The music halls in London are now under strict supervision, and some of them used to need it very much in days gone by. Personally I should suppress the male comic singer who tries to win a laugh from degraded listeners by unseemly means, and I should not scruple to draft a short Act ensuring imprisonment for such as he; but, so long as the entertainment remains inoffensive to the general good sense of the community, we need not weep greatly if it is sometimes just a trifle stupid. No one who does not know the inner life of the working-classes can imagine how restricted are their interests. Moreover, I shall venture on making a somewhat startling statement which may surprise those who look on the surface of things as indicated in the newspapers. The working-classes of a certain grade cherish a certain convention regarding themselves, but they do not understand their own set at all. If they heard a real mechanic or labourer spouting sentiment in the shop or the club, they would silence him very summarily; but the stage working-man, the stage hawker, the stage tinker may utter any claptrap that he likes, and the audience try to believe that they might possibly have been able to talk in the same way but for circumstances. It is not at any time pleasant to see people going on under a delusion; but, supposing the delusion is no worse than that of the man who thinks himself handsome or witty or fascinating while he is really plain or silly or a bore, what can the mistake matter to anybody? We smile at the little vanity, and perhaps pride ourselves a little on our own remarkable superiority, and there the business may very well end. The men of the music hall live, as I have said, entirely in a dull convention; and, if a set of thorough artists were to portray them exactly, no one would be more surprised than the folk whose portraits were taken. The gentlemen who are resolved to regenerate the music-hall stage persist in not considering the audience; and yet, when all is said and done, the poor stupid audience should be considered a little. If we played Browning's "Strafford" for them, how much would they be "raised"? They would not laugh, they would not yawn; they would be stupefied, and a trifle insulted. Give them a good silly swinging chorus about some subject connected with the tender affections, and let the refrain run to a waltz rhythm or to a striking drawl, and they are satisfied in mind and rejoice exceedingly. The finer class of people in the East-end of London seem to enjoy the very noblest and even the most abstruse of sacred music at the Sunday concerts; but it will be long before the music-hall audiences are educated up even to the standard of those crowds who come off the Whitechapel pavements to hear Handel. We cannot hurry them: why try? Their lives are very hard, and, when the brief gleam comes on the evening of evenings in the week, we should be content with ensuring them decency, safety, order, and let them enjoy their own entertainment in their own way. A thoroughly prosaic and logical preacher might say to those poor souls with perfect truth, "Why do you waste time in coming here to see things which are done much better in the streets? You roar and cheer and stamp when you see a real cab-horse come across from the wings, and yet in an hour you might watch a hundred cabs pass you in the street and you would not cheer the least bit. You hear a costermonger on the stage say, 'Give me my 'umble fireside, and let my good old missus 'and me my cup o' tea and my 'ard-earned bit o' bread, and all the dooks and lords in Hengland ain't nothin' to me!'—you hear that, and you know quite well that no costermonger on this goodly earth ever talked in that way, and still you cheer. You like only what is unreal, and, when you are shown a character which is supposed in some mysterious way to resemble you, you are more than delighted, and you applaud a thing which is either a silly caricature or an utterly foolish libel." The poor and lowly personage thus hailed with cutting denunciation and logic might say, "Please mind your own business. Do you pay my sixpence for the gallery? No; I find it myself, and I come to have my bit of fun with my own money, in my own place, at my own price. I have enough of workshops and streets and what you call real things; so, when I come out to the play, I want them all unreal, and as unreal as possible. Monday morning's time enough to go back to reality." As often as ever fussy reformers try to do more than ensure propriety in theatres, so often will they be beaten; and I am quite sure that, if any attempt is made to go too far, we may have on any day a repetition of the O.P. riots, which almost ended in the wrecking of the patent playhouses. Let us be treated like grown beings, and not as if we were still in short baby-frocks. Men resent many things, but they resent being made ridiculous more than all. The committees before which many theatrical managers were obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all combine to make the aspect of the general question not a little alarming. Would it not be better then, in sum, to abstain from raising levels to such a mighty extent, and to strive after improving all the amusements on a less heroic scale?



XVII.

A LITTLE SERMON ON FAILURES.

If we study the history of men with patience, it becomes evident that no great work has ever been done in the world save by those who have met with bitter rebuffs and severe trials at the beginning of their career. It seems as though the ruling powers imposed an ordeal on every human being, in order to single out the strong and the worthy from the cowardly and worthless. The weakling who meets with trouble uplifts his voice in complaint and ceases to struggle against obstacles; the strong man or woman remains silent and strives on indomitably until success is achieved. It is strange to see how many complaining weaklings are living around us at this day, and how querulous and unjust are the outcries addressed to Fate, Fortune, and Providence. We are the heirs of the ages; we know all about the brave souls that suffered and strove and conquered in days gone by, and yet many who possess this knowledge, and who have the gift of expression at its highest, spend their time in one long tiresome whimper. Half the poetry of our time is rhythmic complaint; young men who have hardly had time to look round on the splendid panorama of life profess to crave for death, and young women who should be thinking only of work and love and brightness prefer to sink into languor. There is no curing a poet when once he takes to being mournful, for he hugs his own woe with positive pleasure, and all his musical pathos is simply self-pity.

When Napoleon said, "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and you drive him into the enemy's ranks!" he uttered a truth which applies in the moral world as on the battle-field. The sudden panic which causes battalions of troops to hesitate and break up in confusion is paralleled by the numbing despair which seems to seize on the forces of the soul at times. Brave men gaze calmly on the trouble and think within themselves, "Now is the hour of trial; it is needful to be strong and audacious;" weak men drop into hopeless lassitude, and the few who happen to be foolish as well as weak rid themselves of life. I dare say that hardly one of those who read these lines has escaped that one awful moment when effort appears vain, when life is one long ache, and when Time is a creeping horror that seems to lag as if to torture the suffering heart. We need only turn to the vivid chapter of modern life to see the utter folly of "giving in." Let us look at the life-history of a statesman who died some years ago in our country, after wielding supreme power and earning the homage of millions. When young Benjamin D'Israeli first entered society in London, he found that the proud aristocrats looked askance at him. He came of a despised race, he had no fortune, his modes of acting and speaking were strange to the cold, self-contained Northerners among whom he cast his lot, and his chances looked far from promising. He waited and worked, but all things seemed to go wrong with him; he published a poem which was laughed at all over the country; he strove to enter Parliament, and failed again and again; middle age crept on him, and the shadows of failure seemed to compass him round. In one terrible passage which he wrote in a flippant novel called "The Young Duke" he speaks about the woful fate of a man who feels himself full of strength and ability, and who is nevertheless compelled to live in obscurity. The bitter sadness of this startling page catches the reader by the throat, for it is a sudden revelation of a strong man's agony. At last the toiler obtained his chance, and rose to make his first speech in the House of Commons. He was then long past thirty years of age; but he had the exuberance and daring of a boy. All the best judges in the Commons admired the opening of the oration; but the coarser members were stimulated to laughter by the speaker's strange appearance. D'Israeli had dressed himself in utter defiance of all conventions; he wore a dark green coat which came closely up to his chin, a gaudy vest festooned with chains, and glittering rings. His ringlets were combed in a heavy mass over his right shoulder; and it is said that he looked like some strange actor. The noise grew as he went on; his finest periods were lost amid howls of derision, and at last he raised his arms above his head, and shouted, "I sit down now; but the time will come when you will hear me!" A few good men consoled him; but most of his friends advised him to get away out of the country that his great failure might be forgotten. Now here was cause for despair in all conscience; the brilliant man had failed disastrously in the very assembly which he had sworn to master, and the sound of mockery pursued him everywhere. His hopes seemed blighted; his future was dim, he was desperately and dangerously in debt, and he had broken down more completely than any speaker within living memory. Take heart, all sufferers, when you hear what follows. For eleven long years the gallant orator steadily endeavoured to repair his early failure; he spoke frequently, asserted himself without caring for the jeers of his enemies, and finally he won the leadership of the House by dint of perseverance, tact, and intellect. We cannot tell how often his heart sank within him during those weary years; we know nothing of his forebodings; we only know that outwardly he always appeared alert, vigorous, strenuously hopeful. At last his name was known all over the world, and, after his death, a traveller who rode across Asia Minor was again and again questioned by the wild nomads—"Is your great Sheikh dead?" they asked. The rumour of our statesman's power had traversed the earth. Men of all parties acknowledge the indomitable courage of this man who refused to resign the struggle even when the very Fates seemed to have decreed his ruin.

Take a man of another stamp, and observe how he met the first blows of Fortune. Thomas Carlyle had dwelt on a lonely moorland for six years. He came to London and employed himself with feverish energy on a book which he thought would win him bread, even if it did not gain him fame. Writing was painful to him, and he never set down a sentence without severe labour. With infinite pains he sought out the history of the French Revolution and obtained a clear picture of that tremendous event. Piece by piece he put his first volume together and satisfied himself that he had done something which would live. He handed his precious manuscript to Stuart Mill, and Mill's servant lit the fire with it. Carlyle had exhausted his means, and his great work was really his only capital. Like all men who write at high pressure, he was unable to recall anything that he had once set down, and, so far as his priceless volume went, his mind was a blank. Years of toil were thrown away; time was fleeting, and the world was careless of the matchless historian. The first news of his loss stunned him, and, had he been a weak man, he would have collapsed under the blow. He saw nothing but bitter poverty for himself and his wife, and he had some thoughts of betaking himself to the Far West; but he conquered his weakness, forgot his despair in labour, and doggedly re-wrote the masterpiece which raised him to instant fame and caused him to be regarded as one of the first men in Britain. In the whole wide history of human trials I cannot recall a more shining instance of fortitude and triumphant victory over obstacles. Let those who are cast down by some petty trouble think of the lonely, poverty-stricken student bending himself to his task after the very light of his life had been dimmed for a while.

There is nothing like an array of instances for driving home an argument, so I mention the case of a man about whom much debate goes on even to this day. Napoleon starved in the streets of Paris; one by one he sold his books to buy bread; he was without light or fire on nights of iron frost, and his clothing was too scanty to keep out the cold. He arrived at that pass which induces some men to end all their woes by one swift plunge into the river; but he was not of the despairful stamp, and he stood his term of misery bravely until the light came for him. Leave his splendid, chequered career of glory and crime out of reckoning, and remember only that he became emperor because he had courage to endure starvation; that lesson at least from his career can harm no one. Choose the example of a woman, for variety's sake. George Eliot was quite content to scrub furniture, make cheese and butter, and sweep carpets until she arrived at ripe womanhood. She felt her own extraordinary power; but she never repined at the prospect of spending her life in what is lightly called domestic drudgery. The Shining Ones oftenest walk in lowly places and utter no sound of mourning. She was nearing middle age before she had an opportunity of gaining that astonishing erudition which amazed professed students, and, had she not chanced to meet Mr. Spencer, our greatest philosopher, she would have lived and died unknown. She never questioned the decrees of the Power that rules us all, and, when she suddenly took her place as one of the first living novelists, she accepted her fame and her wealth humbly and simply. Till her last day she remembered her bitter years of frustration and failure, and the meanest of mortals had a share of her holy sympathy; she gained her unexampled conquest by resolutely treading down despair, and her brave story should cheer the many girls who find life bleak and joyless. George Eliot was prepared to bear the worst that could befall her, and it was her frank and gentle acceptance of the facts of life that brought her joy in the end. We must also remember such people as Arkwright, Stephenson, Thomas Edwards the naturalist, and Heine the poet. Arkwright saw his best machinery smashed again and again; but his bull-dog courage brought him through his trouble, and he surmounted opposition that would have driven a weakling to exile and death. Stephenson feared that he would never conquer the great morass at Chat Moss, and he knew that, if he failed, his reputation would perish. He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came; but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven years in his "mattress grave;" he was torn from head to foot by the pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid of the other had to be raised in order that he might see those who visited him. Let those who have ever felt the aching of a single tooth imagine what it must have been to suffer the same kind of pain over the whole body. Surely this poor tortured wretch might have been pardoned had he esteemed his life a failure! His spirit never flagged, and he wrote the brightest, lightest mockeries that ever were framed by the wit of man; his poems will be the delight of Europe for years to come, and his memory can no more perish than that of Shakspere.

Enough of examples; the main fact is that to men and women who refuse to accept failure all life is open, and there is something to hope for even up to the verge of the grave. When the sullen storm-cloud of misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair, the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious effort. There never yet was a misfortune or an array of misfortunes, there never was an entanglement wound by malign chance from which a man could not escape by dint of his own unaided energy. By all means let us pity those who are sore beset amid the keen sorrows that haunt the world, look with tenderness on their pain, soothe them in their perplexities; but, before all things, incite them to struggle against the numbing influence of despondency. The early failures are the raw material of the finest successes; and the general who loses a battle, the mechanic who fails to find work, the writer who pines for the approach of tardy fame, the forsaken lover who looks out on a dark universe, and the servant who meets only censure and coldness, despite her attempts to fulfil her duty, all come under the same law. If they consent to drift away into the limbo of failures, they have only to resign themselves, and their existence will soon end in futility and disaster; but, if they refuse to cringe under the lash of circumstances, if they toil on as though a bright goal were immediately before them, the result is almost assured; and, even if they do succumb, they have the blessed knowledge that they have failed gallantly. Half the misfortunes which crush the children of men into insignificance are more or less magnified by imagination, and the swollen bulk of trouble dwindles before an effort of the human will. Read over the dismal record of a year's suicides, and you will find that in nine cases out of ten the causes which lead unhappy men and women to quench their own light of life are absolutely trivial to the sane and steadfast soul. Let those who are heavy of heart when ill-fortune seems to have mastered them remember that our Master is before all things just. He lays no burden that ought not to be borne on any one of His children, and those who give way to despair are guilty of sheer impiety. The same Power that sends the affliction gives also the capability of endurance, and, if we refuse to exert that capability, we are sinful. When once the first inclination toward weakness and doubt is overcome, every effort becomes easier, and the sense of strength waxes keener day by day. Who are the most serene and sympathetic of all people that even the most obscure among us meet? The men and women who have come through the Valley of the Shadow of Tribulation. By a benign ordinance which is uniform in action, it so falls out that the conquerors derive enhanced pleasure from the memory of difficulties beaten down and sorrows vanquished. Where then is the use of craven shrinking? Let us rather welcome our early failures as we would welcome the health-giving rigour of some stern physician. Think of the heroes and heroines who have conquered, and think joyfully also of those who have wrought out their strenuous day in seeming failure. There are four lines of poetry which every English-speaking man and woman should learn by heart, and I shall close this address with them. They were written on the memorial stone of certain Italian martyrs—