CHAPTER II. THE VICTORIAN COMMONWEALTH. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "In our provinces a rich man visits his stable and his dog-kennel, if disengaged, every day, who hardly five times in his life has entered a peasant's cottage, unless it might be for shelter from the rain, though perhaps the cottage was his own. His stable must be warm, yet well ventilated; his dog-kennel littered with clean straw, and abundantly supplied with running water; the cottage, meanwhile, has no cover to its draw-well,-no drain from its dung-hill, and no resident incumbent in its pigsty. He pats his horse, he plays with his spaniel (both of whom always are sure to be well fed); but for his poor Christian neighbour, it is sufficient familiarity if he condescend to touch his hat in return for his salutation." ROBERT EYRES LANDON, M.A." Fountain of Arethusa." "For in very truth it is a new era' a new practice has become indispensable in it. One has heard so often of new eras, new and newest eras, that the word has grown rather empty of late. Yet new eras do come; there is no fact surer than that they have come more than once. And always with a change of era, with a change of intrinsic conditions, there had to be a change of practice and outward relations brought about, if not peaceably, then by violence, for brought about it had to be; there could be no rest come till then. How many eras and epochs not noted at the moment, which, indeed, is the blessedest condition of epochs, that they come quietly, making no proclamation of themselves, and are only visible long after, Cromwell Rebellion, a French Revolution, striking on the horologe of time,' to tell all mortals what a clock it has become, are too expensive, if one could help it." THOMAS CARLYLE." Chartism." A CHAPTER II. Insignificance of England compared with its InfluenceBad Social Circumstances-Exaggerated Views-Classification of the depressed and lower classes-Mendicant Classes New Eras again-Dependence and Independence-Popular Discontent-Contented Misery-The Absorbent System-Power of Property as a means to Elevation of Sentiment. EVERY Englishman must have felt the insignificance of the territory to which he belongs, as compared with the influence it holds, and has in all times held, over the various nations of the globe. It is very marvellous-it is a mystery, that a dot should rule almost a globe. If you look at the actual material position of the British nation, it will dwindle to a mere point: if you trace out the extent of its power and its influence on the map, you will have to follow it, and to note it in every parallel of latitude. But England, in herself, is a type of her more imperial and territorial power.Almost might we suppose a pre-ordaining power and skill had defined her headlands and her cliffs-had scooped her harbours and bays -had wonderfully, in so small a space, comprehended the most difficult and yet the most generous soils, the most depressing yet the most inspiring climate; rich vales for the corn and the herbage, and extensive moors and plains for pasturage; quarries abounding with marbles for genius or luxury, or the ruder stones for the more humble abode; mines for domestic comfort, or for the civil engineer, and ⚫ mighty forests for the rearing of oaks for the ships of commerce and of trade. Let any intelligent traveller make the circuit of the land, and how impressed must he be to find the variation in the life of the people! Walking through Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, he would seem to be amongst a people entirely agricultural; the small towns, quiet villages with the lonely spire, fields sloping down to the wide landscape, plentifully befringed and besprinkled with wood, quiet hedgerow paths, quiet rural scenes, over which peace perpetually broods, while the farms shed over the whole landscape the very spirit of domestic bliss. Staffordshire, Lancashire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire, present a very different appearance. They seldom exhibit the picture of peace, but everywhere give evidences of power-their skies present a perpetual gloom, their fields a perpetual arid and desert appearance-dense populations gather and cluster in the neighbourhood of tall chimnies; air, water, and steam, are all taken prisoners and enslaved. Beneath those populations lie vast mines of coal and iron, in the neighbourhood of rivers, serving as outlets to distant seas, or channelling a way to the spots where the cloth manufacturer may dye his wools. But in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the east of Yorkshire, the high . cliffs are covered with the sheep and the cattle; there, far removed from town or habitation, the shepherd has his lonely mountain shieling; those wild and terrible scenes of nature seem resolutely to defy cultivation, "the greenness shows man must be there," but it is the life of pastoral solitude. The life of England, in its variety, is most extraordinary. What an immense stride the life on the banks of the Thames, and that on the banks of the Tynethe life of the Quantock woodman of the Cullercoats fisherman-of the Cornish miner-of the Mersey mariner; yet all these varieties, and innumerable others than these, occupy a place in the same small island, and are heirs of the same commonwealth. The Victorian Commonwealth is the most wonderful picture on the face of the earth, perhaps on no other spot of ground has heaven ever grouped so bright a constellation of its best mercies; "He hath not done so with any people;" it is not self-adulation, it is not the outpouring of patriotism, it is the simple statement of a fact; and there is no reason why, for ages hence, as surely as in the ages past, England may not be the workshop of the world, the brain and thinker of the race, the mighty necessity of civilization. Walking through this great commonwealth, one is struck with the prodigious, the inexhaustible stores of wealth. What sight more solemn than London Bridge at night, and those dread forests of shipping? What thought more solemn than that, on this small spot of land, 20,000,000 of |