BAD TASTE. THERE are few terms of reproachful censure more generally played shuttle-cock with in the world, than the ever-ready stigma of a bad taste. One portion of society casts it from the battledoor of its own perfectibility upon another, which, in turn, as freely delivers it back, of course repudiating themselves all approximation to so unenviable a distinction. There are as many varieties of bad taste in life as there are degrees of human conduct, each shape of it clinging to its possessor as tenaciously as his familiar habits, and going hand-in-hand with his outward bearing. We hold good and bad taste to be mere synonymes for good and bad behaviour; the first, the legitimate appertaining of an educated mind, and a gentlemanly deportment, as natural to the soil of cultivation, as innate rectitude of conduct to the gentleman; and the other, as firmly wedded to the coarse perceptions and vulgar tone of the ill-bred and illiterate. According to the modern acceptation of the words, there is a taste in every thing a man says, performs, or even dresses in; in fact, it is but another term for the "mind" an individual evinces in the general and particular circumstances of every-day life. And as it is by the performance of trivial items that the disposition of the heart is readiest seen, the taste a man or woman evinces in their general outward commerce with the world, may be taken as a very tolerable index of the mental harmony within; for it is as impossible for a refined intellect to express itself coarsely, as for a vulgarminded man to estimate the delicacy of a refined senti ment. Bad taste is a phrase generally used, but by no means generally understood, for every class and section of society put their own construction upon its signification; and what is bad taste in one order of people, is the summit of becoming beauty in another. The red bandana for the neck is exquisitely chaste in the eyes of a coal-heaver's mistress; while the same glaring appendage round the throat of a gentleman would be denominated by other society as the acme of slang and vulgarity. A man, in our estimation, has no more right to commit solecisms in dress than in behaviour; both offend equally, the one the eye and harmony of taste, and the other, our self-respect and moral condition. One censures his friend for his bad taste, in asking a coqueting widow questions about her late husband; while another makes morning calls in tartan trowsers and waistcoat, and with a white hat and black band. Such a magpie harlequin offering a lady his arm, commits as great a breach of good taste, as the other with his mal a propos questions. There is an old and trite saying, that everything in life has two sides, from a house to an argument; but in this instance, the rule is out of joint, for the varieties of bad taste set so meagre a division at defiance, and are as multiplied as the individuals to whom the term is affixed as a reproach. offices of death to menials and hired assistants, would be estimated as the highest breach of nature and decorum. Who then shall decide between the two-which is bad taste! To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty's holiest touch of nature. To hasten from the quivering soul, and in dark chambers pour out the tears of sensitive regret, while stranger hands prepare the weeds of sepulchre, is the course that affluence assigns to solemn sorrow. The patrician bride drives through the land with the proclamation of four horses, and white favours, asking the many-eyed world to stare at her blushes; while the plebeian maid goes at the dusk of day with unostentatious modesty to her new-found home, at once installed mistress and wife! Again, we ask, which is the better taste-display or secrecy ! Let us then treat with sparing hand and cleanly conscience the, to us, defective taste of those whose feelings we do not share, and of whose sentiments we are ignorant, and weigh the taste, good or bad, of others with the truest balance of impartiality, rather than remorselessly sweep down peculiarities we do not understand, with the Turkshead of our long-shafted censure. Mankind in general judge as vaguely of every class but their own as of those illimitable tracts that lie beyond the belt of our African knowledge. The ebon lips of a Hottentot Juliet are as redolent of kissing loveliness to her sable Romeo, as the most Hebe mouth of paler beauty to the impassioned youth of northern regions. We cannot then be too chary in our condemnation of the taste of others, not knowing how offensive our own habits may appear to the very persons we condemn. Whatever difficulties there may be in defining limits, and giving definition to a bad taste, there can be no question of cavil as to what constitutes its more graceful antagonist; for good taste can have but one interpretation; it requires no language to express it, for it is of that universal hieroglyph, that the most barbarous and the most polished of all nations and times can read as legibly as the aspects of the heavens a gentle deportment and an innate delicacy of soul. Possessed of these, good taste can never err, for they are the help and compass of all social commerce; the one conducting, while the other directs the human mind through the channels of life, and past the rocks of vulgar habit, and the shoals of a really bad taste. W. HILLYARD. Notices of New Works. Swain's English Melodies. Longmans & Co. WE have great pleasure in introducing to the notice of our readers a collection of songs and lyrical pieces, by Charles Swain, the well-known author of "The Mind," and one of England's sweetest bards. He belongs to the noble brotherhood of poets who sing divinely of the divine in man, and who, appealing to all that is best and highest in human nature, promote virtue and truth by the influence of love alone. If such are the moral Believe us, reader, that bad taste, like most sentiments, is only relative. The unctuous morsels of a stranded regenerators of the world, and as rivers, in their deep and whale are as delicate viands to the palate of a Kamts-noiseless flow purify and enrich the land, so do their chatkan aristocrat, as the breast of an ortolan to the heart and mind. But as a good thing carries its own streams of harmony and love purify and invigorate the beauty of May Fair. Each would repudiate with disgust recommendation, we will only select some few of these the aliment of the other. melodies, as instances of the fresh and healthy feeling which pervades them throughout, confident that these few will tempt to further a more intimate acquaintance with The mother who can calmly buy a string of tape to measure the corpse of her own son, and carry the dimensions to the undertaker; or, the man who can perform the death-bed rites, and make his own brother's coffin, may appear instances of the acme of bad taste to the bulk of society; yet to others, numerous as leafy June, the act of one or both bears nothing in its aspect beyond the pale of commendation. To preach to such of taste and delicacy of feeling, would elicit only looks of admiration and terms of marvel at your objection. Yet, to the self-same class, the idea of leaving the the book itself: TAKE THE WORLD AS IT IS. Take the world as it is! there are good and bad in it, And good and bad will be from now to the end; And they who expect to make saints in a minute, Are in danger of marring more hearts than they'll mend. If ye wish to be happy ne'er seek for the faults, Or you're sure to find something or other amiss; 'Mid much that debases, and much that exalts, The world's not a bad one if left as it is 1 Take the world as it is! if the surface be shining, And chide not, unless it may be with a kiss; The heart in itself hath a fountain of bliss! TIME TO ME. Time to me this truth hath taught, If advice we would convey, There's a time we should convey it; There's a time in which to say it! Which no human aid can touch! Lies some canker-grief concealed, Many a fault of human blindness, "Tis a truth that's worth revealing; THE THREE CALLERS. Morn calleth fondly to a fair boy, straying. 'Mid golden meadows, rich with clover dew; Heeds not the time-he sees but one sweet form, O'er pleasures gone, as all life's pleasures go; Night calls him to her, and he leaves his door, Silent and dark,-and he returns no more. Whilst on the subject of Swain's poetry we cannot refrain from quoting, for the benefit of those to whom it may be unknown, a song full of true Christian spirit and benevolence : LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Let us love one another,-not long may we stay, DIAMOND DUST. Ir a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubt; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. A USE must have preceded an abuse. SOME characters are like bubbles, so delicate as to be directed by a breath; others more rigid and compressed, like metallic balls, need violence to impel them: the first so gentle, are yet too volatile for reliance; the others inertly obstinate, become in their very passiveness active ill. NATURE is the soul of art. CURIOUS TITLE.-A book was printed during the time of Cromwell with the following title:-"Eggs of charity, layed by the chickens of the covenant, and boiled with the water of divine love. Take ye and eat." WE should promote our happiness by acquiring a certain respect for the follies of mankind; for there are so many fools whom the world entitles to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight, will be too often quarrelling with the disposal of things to relish that share which is allotted to himself. GOOD nature, like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the sweetest flower. THERE is one misfortune unhappily attendant on people with vivid imaginations; when they have formed their projects of future happiness, they are too apt to neglect the means of securing it; they build themselves a palace in the future, and allow the cottage they possess to crumble into dust; instead of ploughing in the autumn, and sowing in the spring, they already reap in imagination. THERE is a medium between a foolish security and an unreasonable distrust. Ir is a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us, and approve of all we say. THE paleness of death is more lovely than the paleness of sorrow. How small a number are there of the comparatively few favoured by capricious fortune, who do not, with an obstinate ingratitude for the benefits bestowed upon them, throw life's best and dearest treasures in a vain and often fruitless chase after blessings often existing in imagination! Even when tangible and attained, they serve only to show their inefficiency for happiness; and, as if in revenge for this, we often observe but small possessors of the world's best treasures enjoying a content and happiness beyond all price, vainly grasped at by fortune's more brilliant favourites. A WORD spoken pleasantly is a large spot of sunshine on a sad heart. WHERE education has been entirely neglected or improperly managed, we see the worst passions ruling with uncontrolled and incessant sway. Good sense degenerates into craft, and anger rankles into malignity. Restraint, which is thought most salutary, comes too late, and the most judicious admonitions are urged in vain. FICTITIOUS representations of what is praiseworthy are useful for preparing the mind of man to act in real life. Yet fiction itself has boundaries, which sound and sober sense has a right to prescribe, but which the acuteness of feeling, and the vigour of fancy in men of genius, are apt to overleap. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by JOHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride' in the City of London. Saturday, August 4, 1849. [PRICE 14d. THE GREAT QUESTION OF RAGGED SCHOOLS. especially Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Man WERE a foreigner to inquire of us why, amidst much that is unwise and needing remedy, the moral, social, and consequently, religious progress of this great country is a more substantial and certain thing than the same progress of any other country in the world, we should, in an instant, unhesitatingly answer-because we are at this moment the most zealous in effecting such reforms as will, more or less, indirectly strengthen, purify, and christianize the great basis of our social fabric. Other countries may be mentioned, perhaps, as showing far greater progress on a given point-as education in some cantons of Switzerland and States of America, but, in no other country in the world, look where we may, and with even far less disadvantages to work against than ourselves, do we see so many efficient agents brought into force to ameliorate the general condition of the population. It is true, this is a state of things new in the world's history, for hitherto it has been the civilization of classes, not of the great mass which form the groundwork of communities; though, without this foundation be strengthened, and its moral and religious condition broadened out, civilization is a shadow, and a fiction useless to any substantial end. But the consequent result of our own higher and middle-class progress for the last sixty years, as so ably proved by Mr. Macaulay, and by a mass of parliamentary evidence on various criminal and educational questions, is, that having ourselves so far advanced, we are beginning to judiciously operate upon that section of society which will most largely contribute, through its moral, social, and religious improvement, to make another century, of English civilization and Christianity, a glory to itself and a pattern to the world. We clearly foresee that the experiments in progress upon this moral, educational, and physical condition of the masses will elicit higher and more comprehensive truths for the guidance of future legislators, than any yet brought to light by the progress of human knowledge. In truth, therefore, the conception of the plan of Ragged Schools, and their gradual success in this country, is one of the highest tests which could be given of a national progress at once substantial and hopeful; for unfortunately, hitherto, it has happened that, whereever there has been a circumscribed territory, and a dense population, as in large cities and towns, there have existed fastnesses whose criminal, squalid, ignorant and miserable population, have been constantly recruited in numbers by the vice and evil passions of the other classes, and whose existence could not be otherwise than inimical to public decency and order. When we find, therefore, that 30,000 "naked, filthy, lawless, and deserted children," are congregated in London alone, and that a proportionate number infest the great towns, chester, surprise at the circumstance, or invective against honest pleasure, that this is the first nation, and the first any of the known sources of the evil, should give place to age, to bring into use any real or efficient means of improvement. It is said by some that to bestow a degree of providence and education upon these children is unjust to the working classes, to the thriving, toiling, honest man and woman, who only through unremittent labour, and often not then, give their children any degree of education; that we, in fact, bestow a premium upon profligacy and idleness. But this objection is untrue every way; to the working classes themselves, to their children, and to that honest sense of self-dependence, decency, and estimation of untarnished honesty, which we sincerely believe is growing up amongst them. Unfortunately, in dealing with this question, we have no choice; we must either educate or punish, we must either lessen the amount of evil or increase it; which is best and cheapest, our bitter experience has at length taught us. Report of the Ragged School Union, "that these schools "Never let it be forgotten were instituted for that class who were debarred, by their says the Fifth Annual debased and filthy condition, from all other means of instruction and improvement, for that class whom no existing school would or could admit within its walls; for that class who were sunk in such ignorance, wretchedness, and vice, as to render them unfit to mix with any other class of our juvenile population; for that class who are large enough to occupy all our efforts without interfering with those who are already provided for." Considering that this extensive class are the children of convicts, either transported or in prison at home, of thieves not in custody, of the lowest mendicants and tramps, of worthless drunken parents-such constituting a large class; of stepfathers and stepmothers, who have driven them, through neglect and cruelty, to shift for themselves; of those who have lost, or have been deserted by parents, and those who, thus solitary and destitute, by pilfering, are forced by a miserable necessity to seek a live by selling articles in the streets through the day, or home in those worst breeding-places of juvenile delinquency-the cheap lodging-houses; no ordinary means, such as would meet the mere want of education or industrial training in the children of honest, though needy persons, would have met this evil in all its extensive bearings; this great necessity, if we may so speak, of moral purification. In this necessity was to be met, almost all the causes of juvenile delinquency, and of opposing to them all such agents as might neutralize crime in its normal condition, and to convert the existing elements of evil into some sort of approximation to the decent and orderly bearing which characterizes the other sections of the labouring population. Such was the need, and it was met when the first Ragged School was founded; it is has yet known, but draw with them the respect, the cooperation, and the leadership of the more educated classes. Without reckoning that the more we lessen the amount of our dangerous classes, the more do we enlarge the sources of productive industry, and strengthen that moral basis of the nation, on which all the security of industrial rights finally rest. Therefore, between the charitable assistance which all governments have a moral duty to afford its destitute classes, particularly when with the view of making such ultimately self-supporting, and the moral self-assistance of the great body of the working classes, there is a broad distinction; a moral, religious, industrial distinction, clear to the plainest capacity not degraded by the self-inflicted pauperism of the beer-shop; a distinction which the honest and industrious portion of the working upon the little which government is called upon to do in assisting the unfed, the untaught, and the unhappy children of the streets. The more that the industrial principle is developed in these schools, and this in respect to such forms of labour as would be most useful in a colony, the more certain and beneficial will be the future result. It is the intention of the Committee of the Ragged School Union to establish a Central Industrial School, as soon as suitable premises can be obtained or built, "where destitute boys and girls from the various ragged schools may, for a certain time previous to qualifying for emigration, be lodged, trained, and taught some useful trade, thus being made, in many respects, more fit for the duties of a colonial life than any who have yet gone out." Such a central school, if efficiently conducted, would serve as a model one for the rest of the kingdom, and give a stimulus to the exertions of local committees ; for, however much the colonies need labour, however much every ship and every letter bring but one reiteration, "give us labour," it is not for us, in order to lessen the crime, the misery, and destitution of our streets, to cast upon their shores a mass of untaught, untrained juvenility. more legitimately met by every additional school which is opened in neglected and squalid neighbourhoods, by every shilling put down in its behalf, and more than all, by the zeal of those who take upon themselves the almost apostolic mission of raising and enlightening these unhappy dregs of the sins, the misery, and the neglect of society. But one of the most genuine characteristics of our social reforms is, that they are eminently steady and progressive, compared to those of other nations. Emanating more from the growth of public conviction than from popular enthusiasm, they start often from the smallest conceivable point, a mere individual attempt to neutralize an evil, into a prominent question of the State, a motion for ministers, and an object for discussion through the press. More prominently than usual has this been the case with Ragged Schools. Begun by a poor Plymouth cobbler at his lap-classes will proudly recognise, instead of looking back stone, and elsewhere by some few Sunday School teachers, whose attention, in the course of their duties, had become directed to this miserable class of children, who were too depraved, too lawless, too filthy to be admitted amongst their ordinary pupils, eighty-two of these Ragged Schools are now scattered over the fastnesses of this metropolis, in which labour no less than eight hundred and fifty voluntary teachers, whilst the ultimate destiny of these outcast children, after the moral purification they may receive in passing through these schools, was a subject most ably brought before Parliament by Lord Ashley in the session of last year. This destiny must become an object to the State, unless our policy be designedly such as builds up public morality with one hand, and destroys it with the other. For, if we supersede immorality by some consciousness of its opposite, and ignorance by comparative knowledge, yet still hopelessly expose the child to all the monstrous temptations of hunger, the hunger of the streets and of destitute homes, we but refine a moral and physical torture, and add to the despair of those we have striven to reform. But emigration, as Lord Ashley so admirably showed, affords at once a solution to the difficulty, and a natural remedy to the main cause of juvenile destitution and juvenile delinquency; it affords at once what is most In a word, a great crusade has been begun, and it must needed remunerative labour, giving relief to this be carried onward in an earnest spirit, for the time is country, and assistance to colonial prosperity. First, past when the basis of our great social fabric can remain supposing that the moral and educational purification, or as it is with safety to the State. In every step taken by what Captain Maconochie more stringently calls "filtra- the Sanitary Act, every revealment made by it of the tion," has been carried out with due effect, in connection causes of physical and moral degradation, will only show with industrial training, a more useful class of emigrants us how much we have to fear of future evil, how much could scarcely be selected. "In the selection of people,' to hope of good, if we, like the great Christian of says Mr. Wakefield, "for a passage wholly or partially Bunyan's fable, step boldly onward in the path before us. cost free, a preference should always be given to young If we cleanse sewers, and streets, and courtways, we must married couples, or to young people of, or near the mar- try to root out the abominations of the vagrant lodgingriageable age, in an equal proportion to the sexes. Such houses, and have some more stringent authority than an arrangement would take away from the old country, what the Sanitary Act seems to give for preventing the and introduce into the colonies, the greatest possible promiscuous herding of children therein. There should amount of population and labour, in such a manner as to be no temporizing on this point; every chaplain of a jail, have the maximum of effect both in the colonies and the and every governor of a penitentiary would tell us so. mother country; for their powers of labour would last This much the Sanitary Commissioners must aid us in. longest, and they would be found more ready than a fully There is, too, another power yet unexercised. Can we adult class to turn their hands to new employments, and have no model lodging-houses for juvenile vagrancy— a maximum of value would be obtained for any given for the vagrancy which has no home, no parents, or, outlay." To disarm the popular objection as to vice being having such, are only unfortunate in their possession? assisted in preference to indigent decency, it must be Where there was not absolute destitution, the child's recollected, that all governments hold both a duty and a penny, whether earned by selling flowers, or matches, or right to see that the individual, whilst pursuing what he fruit, or sweeping crossings, or holding horses, would be conceives to be his own legitimate mode of existence, does found to be as good coin as any in the realm, and take not interfere with the well-being and rights of his neigh- from us-a nation-the stigma and the sorrow that we bours. Now, these children, if left untaught and ungo-have human children amongst us, who, in our inclement verned, are the worst neighbours the working classes can northern winter, have not the shelter of the bat and wolf. have, both as vicious schoolmasters to their offspring, and But, as a whole, we must not rely too much upon these a monstrous, though indirect, burden on their industry. extraneous aids; upon government, upon parishes, upon Whereas, on the other hand, the working classes of this committees, upon colonial need. None of these will suffice country might, by the commonest exercise of prudence for the lack of the Christian within us; and to be fully and sobriety, gather together, through uniting their frac- Christian, we have but to picture one whom we may own tional savings, such a capital as would not only open up and cherish, the child upon our daily hearth, houseless, a more magnificent power of colonization than the world parentless, untaught, unfed, uncared for, with no teachers but sin and misery, with no notion of a kindred, a country, and a God; and all that is Christian in us will prompt us to serve this cause, to the best of such means as we individually have. ALL CAN SERVE IT. None are too high or low. Some by the pen, some by teaching, some by pecuniary aid from the penny to the pound, some by food or apparel, and all of us congregated by faith and good words. Recollect that by so doing we cheat the gibbet and the prison of their prey; we help happiness and defraud misery, we strengthen morally, religiously, and physically our social ties; we extend the bounds of productive industry; and we help, directly help, this age and this nation to be practically Christian and noble in its progress. This is no exordium, only truth set down in words. Therefore, let such truth be productive of results towards enlarged efficiency of Ragged Schools. SILVERPEN. THE POACHERS. "Then, are we to have no privileges? Would you put us on a level with the lower orders in field sports?" My dear fellow, our wealth is a great privilege; and the right to hold our estates tight is a great privilege. But when you would give to the man who can buy a license, because he is rich, a right of shooting a wild beast on his estate, and call it 'sport,' while you deprive another man, who cannot buy a license, because he is poor, of shooting the same beast on his common, or when it is eating down his crops, and call it 'crime,' I think you are claiming what you are not entitled to, and what is only calculated to produce enmity and bitter feeling among those who should be the staunchest friends -the landed gentry and the inhabitants of the soil." "Come, come," said the Squire, " you are too hard upon us, friend Brainard; you are growing a desperate radical, I fear. I know what I shall do; and that is, what my fathers have done before me. As I live, I shall clear my estates of poachers, though it should be by pressing them all into my own service." Ay, there you have hit it, Squire; give the poachers wages, and I'll warrant me you'll soon cure poaching." "Well, it was only last week I took on, as assistant desperate poachers in the parish; and he promises to turn out a good servant." "Bravo! bravo! Squire. But what becomes of those nobody will hire?" "Fine them," said one. "But they have got nothing." 66 Then, imprison them," said another. THE year was drawing to a close, and a gay sporting party had assembled at Audsley Hall, to beat the covers on the morrow, for no estate in Lincolnshire was better pre-keeper, a fellow who, I am told, was one of the most served than the Squire's. There were covers for foxes, and preserves for hares and pheasants, and plenty of keepers to see to their creature comforts. The Squire was fond of his field sports; he liked the good old English customs, and he loved to see about him happy faces, and jolly ones. True, his tenants complained, and with good reason, of the damage done to their crops, the spring wheat trodden under hoof by the hunt, the growing barley eaten down by the hares and rabbits all along the skirts of the preserves, not to speak of the seeds picked up by the pheasants and partridges almost as soon as sown. But the Squire was generous; his tenants sat at low rents; and he was always ready to deal liberally with them for damages done to fences and crops during the sporting season. He was disposed, indeed, to make no small sacrifices to keep up the good old style of country living and of field sports. A cheerful fire blazed in the chimney, for the weather was already cold for the season; the glasses sparkled on the board, and the wine circled freely amidst gay converse. The Squire was the life of the party, a host in himself. He told his best stories with an unction; of the "tremendous run" of last week; how Bess had been so deucedly knocked up, but how she had tailed the field and got in at the death; and then, of the two nights last week that he had spent with his keepers "hunting poachers." "It strikes me," lisped a new-caught looking young gentleman from the Fens, "that this poaching has been allowed to go too far, and that some decided measures should be taken by the country to put it down." "Are not we doing all that can be done?" asked the Squire. Here have I got the best set of keepers in all England; and we watch the scoundrels night and day. We shall both put 'em down and keep 'em down." "Ah, that may be; but I mean some more stringent laws; we have grown too sentimental about such things. Villains should be made an example of." "Well, Chumley," interposed a stout gentleman, from the other side of the table, "I don't know what you may think of it; but I know this of myself, that were I as badly off as some of those men are who poach, I should be a poacher too. And I would poach for the mere love of the sport, were there no other motive." "Oh, monstrous! And are we to have no laws, then?" "Laws you have, and rather too much of them, I think. But if your laws don't fit your social state, what then? They are worse than useless; for any law that will not be kept, is but a nuisance, tempting men to break it. And thus it is that you breed criminals." But they come out of gaol much worse than they went in." 66 Then, knock 'em on the head." "No! no! that won't do. Neither staves nor lead will do; there is a better and a milder way.” "Milder fiddlesticks," cried the Squire; "I tell you I would think no more of shooting a poacher than I would a thief or a burglar." It was a rash word. The Squire didn't mean it; for, in his heart, he was a generous, feeling man; one whose breast glowed with love of his kind; who sympathized warmly with the distresses of the poor on his estates; who would take the bereaved widow's hand by the old church porch, and stroke the heads of her fatherless children; who stopt not there, but was himself a father to them in their time of need. But, for all that, he was a keen sportsman and a game-preserver. We now change the scene to a cottage on the verge of the common, about a mile from the entrance-gate of Audsley Park. A little oil-lamp cast a faint glimmering light around a miserable apartment, clay-floored and bare-walled, in which sat a woman, with a child at her breast, and a grim-featured, grizly-bearded man, dressed in fustian, in which many a rent was visible. He wore an old felt cap or hat, and his throat was compassed by a red cotton handkerchief. The woman was sobbing, and vainly struggled to restrain her grief. "I don't half like it," she said, "and I would rather clem than give in to such ways. There's no good can come on't." "Why, wife, what would you have? Here have I been three months out of work, and there is yet no prospect of my falling in. I could starve well enough myself, for that part on't, but these children "True, true! It's a hard case, that of poor folks like But there's the Squire; couldn't he take you on, as he has done your brother?" we. "I have tried the steward and the head keeper again and again. There's no chance there. But there's no use saying more on't. There now, like a good lass, and stop your crying.” A low tap at the window interrupted the conversation, and the man rose to open the door. |