sheep no one face is alike another; but then, no one face is so peculiar that it is unlike the face of a sheep. Nature, in her individualisation, cleaves to the general. So does all high art.

'The Village' of Crabbe is really his native 'Borough' of Aldborough, in Suffolk. It was such a' Borough' as England tolerated within the last quarter of a century. Its population, seventy years ago, has been described in lines which forcibly contrast with the Arcadian pictures in Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village.'

"Where are the swains, who, daily labour done,
With rural games play'd down the setting sun;
Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball,
Or made the ponderous quoit obliquely fall;
While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong,
Engag'd some artful stripling of the throng,
And fell beneath him, foil'd, while far around
Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return'd the sound?
Where now are these?-Beneath yon cliff they stand,
To show the freighted pinnace where to land;
To load the ready steed with guilty haste,
To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste,
Or, when detected, in their straggling course,
To foil their foes by cunning or by force;
Or, yielding part (which equal knaves demand)
To gain a lawless passport through the land."

Amongst such scenes lived the young Poet ;

amongst

"a bold, artful, surly, savage race;

Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe,

The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,"

watched the tost vessel from the shore, rejoicing in

the prospect of a wreck. Smuggler, wrecker, venal elector-all are gone from Aldborough. The 'Borough' is disfranchised; wise revenue laws have put an end to the smuggler's vocation. With the smuggler vanished the pedlar who carried about contraband goods:

"Dawkins, a dealer once, on burthen'd back
Bore his whole substance in a pedlar's pack;
To dames discreet, the duties yet unpaid,
His stores of lace and hyson he convey'd."

They are gone. Will the time never arrive when wise laws shall consign the poacher to the same oblivion ?

Crabbe has described the sorrows of the poor, in verses which may have done something to lead us to mitigate the labourer's lot, by benefits more enduring than what is miscalled Charity. He has described, too, the Poor-house, such as it existed in those days:

"Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor,

Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day,-
There, children dwell who know no parents' care."

No

That wretched parish work-house is gone. walls of mud-no broken door-no naked rafters -no patched panes-no pestilent vapours in badly ventilated rooms. The parentless children are taught far better than many who do know the parents' care. Society is doing its duty to stop the

growth of pauperism, and to succour real destitution. There are two obsolete portraits connected with the Poor, which we may happily contrast with the same official persons in our own times.

And first, the Parish Apothecary, who struts into the wretched bed-room of the old Work-house, where

"The drooping wretch reclines his languid head."

The Apothecary comes:

"But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,

Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls;
Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,

All pride and business, bustle and conceit;
With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go,
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye :

A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy Bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.
Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
Impatience mark'd in his averted eyes;
And, some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply, he rushes on the door;
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain;
He ceases now the feeble help to crave

Of man; and silent sinks into the grave."

Jeffrey, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1807, says "The consequential apothecary, who gives an impatient attendance in these homes of

misery, is admirably described." If Jeffrey had reviewed Crabbe thirty years later, he must have said that such a character was a creature of pure imagination. Let any person who knows of the labours of the medical officer of a Poor Law Union say if there be one now in the charge of an English parish,

"Who first insults the victim whom he kills;"

who is protected by "a drowsy Bench ;"

"And whose most tender mercy is neglect."

In these our days, happier in many respects, the medical officer, overworked as too many official and non-official people are, can rarely be accused of want of zeal. He rides from cottage to cottage; he is ready at all hours by day or by night; a thousand eyes are upon him. People of all ranks know that neglect of the poor is visited upon the rich. But his discharge of his duty is the result of what has become an esprit de corps. He has deep responsibilities which "bustle and conceit " will not shuffle off. He must know, and he must act. His ministry is one of benevolence; and he must work it out, even in the face of his own danger and suffering. If fever strike down the poor man, "the doctor," as the poor man calls him, must be at his side. There is no "drowsy Bench" to tell him to stay away; for more vigilant administrators know that if the sick man die there are orphans to be provided for. The whole tone of society has changed in its estimate of the Poor and the duties which we

owe to them. No wonder that Crabbe's Parish Apothecary is as obsolete as the Physician's muff of a century ago.

I approach, with equal confidence, the obsolete portrait of the Parish Priest-he who is summoned to the pauper's bed to impart the last consolations:

"But ere his death some pious doubts arise,

Some simple fears, which 'bold bad men' despise;
Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove
His title certain to the joys above:

For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls
The holy stranger to these dismal walls:
And doth not he, the pious man, appear,
He, 'passing rich with forty pounds a year?'
Ah! no a shepherd of a different stock,
And far unlike him, feeds this little flock :
A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task
As much as God or man can fairly ask;
The rest he gives to loves and labours light,
To fields the morning, and to feasts the night;
None better skill'd the noisy pack to guide,
To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide;
A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day,
And, skill'd at whist, devotes the night to play :
Then while such honours bloom around his head,
Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed,

To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal
To combat fears that e'en the pious feel?"

That Priest has followed the Parish Apothecary to oblivion. But I have seen the man, even in my time. I have seen an honourable and reverend gentleman pacing down the main street of a country town, with gun in hand, and mob at heel, to a pigeon match. Are there such ministers left? I believe not. They are with the Parson Trullibers

VOL. II.

L