comfortable, and the rent would in consequence be raised."* This circumstance has not so much reference to our own country, still it is beautiful to notice what will be done for a cottage by a man who feels it to be his own; he will trim its garden, he will patch up its walls, he will take a delight in placing successive improvements around it; it is his own, and he expects to die there, and to leave it to his children, and every moment of his spare time is dedicated to the making it more beautiful and lovely. It is most important, if a man is to take an interest in his work, that he should have a stake in it, that he should feel that his happiness in some considerable degree depends upon the interest of such labour and work : the power of labour, when it feels that it is performing for itself, is immense the desert yields before it-the very rock gives up the contest-the most wild waste is reclaimedthe solitary moor, where the heath-fowl only flew, re-echoes with the sound of human voices and the heavy tread of human feet; nature smiles, for this is like her own work, and increases her produce and her gifts an hundredfold; poverty shuns the scene, scared not only by the presence of present happiness, but by the conservative influences which are preparing for long years of future enjoyment, toil, though it be when the morning lines the sky with its first blazing tinge of crimson and of gold, or after the last evening beam, is unrepining, be * Southey's "Political Essays." cause it is not unrewarded. Labour then, for the first time, becomes a sacrament and a psalm, and life glides on in the happy round of duties which all bring their own sweet reward. Sorrow is chastened in some degree by hope, and even present distress finds the tools are left with which it may yet work out its pathway among the difficult hills. CHAPTER III. THE PHYSIQUE AND MORALE OF A GREAT CITY. PROLOGUE OF QUOTATIONS. "There is no law, no principle based on past experience, which may not be overthrown in a moment by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material; and the most rational if not the only mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient autho rity in our judgment, is to cease for a little while our endeavours to deal with the multiplying hosts of particular abuses, restraints, or acquirements; and endeavour to determine as the guides of every efforts, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right; laws which, based upon man's nature, not upon his knowledge, may pos sess so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them." JOHN RUSKIN,-"Seven Lamps of Architecture." "In times past great minds led a host, and gave their names to the regions that had been opened or conquered under their guidance. But now it seems task enough if we can bring ourselves to contem.. plate with serenity, and to comprehend the giddy tossings-the reeling to and fro-of the social system. In presence of these vast and ominous convulsions, what is the pulpit, or the press even, or what the consultations of good men in committee? They are little more than what the very same means of influence would be, if opposed to the storm-borne swell of the Atlantic! Ominous convulsions we may call them, and yet are they not auspicious?" ISAAC TAYLOR.-"Loyola." |
