less

grave and reverend as well as potent a senior than Mr. Population Malthus himself. "There are very few women who might not have married in some way or other. The old maid, who has never formed an attachment, or has been disappointed in the object of it, has, under the circumstances in which she has been placed, conducted herself with the most perfect propriety; and has acted a much more virtuous and honourable part in society, than those women who marry without a proper degree of love, or at least of esteem, for their husbands; a species of immorality which is not reprobated as it deserves."* Considering his peculiar and unpopular, not to say depopulating, doctrines, Mr. Malthus might be suspected, by the suspiciously disposed, of interested motives and ex parte enthusiasm in this praise of Old Maids. But not less absolutely would we acquit him of any such underplot in this encomium, than of ever having, in a solitary instance, and with all his prowess, induced any old maid to remain in statu quo, who, but for his book, would have changed her name.

THERE was a swoon of yellow cloud,
A scud of wind-tossed blue,

A drift of vapour, crimson proud,

Shot purple through and through,

Then a scurl of the greys of a wild-dove's wing
With shifting pearly hue.

At Forfar, on a bright June eve

(The sun in blazoned pride),

They led old Elspeth to the stake,

Her withered hands both tied;

They brought her with a blast of pipes,

As men bring home a bride.

The pointing children hooted her,

Even the beggar's bitch

Bit at her as she trembling went

To die-"the poisoning witch."

Patched cloaks flocked with soft scarlet hoods

The poor as well as rich.

They struck her as men do a thief,

Pelting the blackening mud;

They would not stay to file the bridge,
But dragged her through the flood.
Old bedrid hags from windows screamed,
Longing to drink her blood.

* Malthus on Population, book iv.

Looking across the fields you saw
Black lines, that widened out,
Of ploughmen running; on the wind.
Came curse, and groan, and shout:
But, God! to hear no single sob
Or sigh from all that rout!

She gasped for mercy. Ask the dog
To spare the strangling life
That in the vixen moans and barks
Deep in the tumbling strife;
Or ask the Indian chief to give
Mercy when blood is rife.

Old Elspeth, with her lean arms crossed
Humbly upon her breast,

Walks painfully with bleeding feet,
A rope strains round her chest;
Sickly her watery eyes upturn
To the gallows further west.

Her coif is off, her ragged hair,
Snow-streaked with wintry years,
Floats out when any gust of wind
Brings billowing storms of cheers;
The rolling mob still screech and roar,
No bloodshot eye drops tears.

She kissed a Bible,-close she kept
The volume to her lips;

Oh! then arose a flame of yells
As when war's red eclipse

Passes. The leaping hangman then
Cried out for "stronger whips."

Yet all this time the mounting larks
Sang far from human toil,-
Miles, miles around the ripening corn
Was in a golden boil;

The bee upon the blue flower swings

In restless, happy moil.

With stolid care across the moor
The distant death-bell rung,

And drowning it five thousand screamed
The ribald dirge that's sung
When the great King Devil has his own,
And another witch is hung.

'Twas pitiful to see them bind

Those shrunk limbs to the stake;
Her idiot sisters' thankful smiles
Approve the pains they take,
And all the cruel, mocking care
With which the sticks they break.
A calcined collar round her neck
The hard-faced hangman fits,
An iron chain around her waist
And round her ankles knits,
As ready for the fire his man

The beech log cleaves and splits.

They thrust the cruel arrowy flame
Into the billet heaps,

Its fiery, serpent quivering tongues
Make eager, hungry leaps;

The poor old creature stretched her hands
To warm them. No one weeps!

The savage tiger fire is lit,

A thunder-cloud of smoke,

In one ribb'd column tall and black,
Rose thirty feet, then broke:
It blotted out the setting sun
As with a burial cloak.

You heard from thickness of the cloud
The mumble of a prayer,

And lo! a shriek, swift, dagger keen,
Sprang up and stabbed the air,
Then just one burning hand that strove
To wave and beckon there.

A silence came upon the crowd,
As when the softening spring
Breaks up the icy northern seas,
Melting ring after ring:
Then, rising o'er their guilty heads,
The lark sought Heaven's King.

Was it the sinner's pleading soul
That rose up to those skies,
High, high above the burning light

And sea of brutal eyes,

The storms and eddies round the stake

Of brutal wild-beast cries?

An hour ago! Now but a ring
Of ashes silvery white,

And filmy sparks that broke in blooms
Of fitful scarlet light,

When scudding winds, with fiery gush,
Drove the children left and right.

And chief amongst the staring crowd
A child laughed with those bands-
She was the maid the hag bewitched
Upon the laird's own lands;

And when she saw the ash blow red
She clapped her little hands.

Thank God, the frightened, cruel folk
Ne'er lit that fire again;

None wore that calcined collar more,
With its griping, throttling strain:-

'Twas a cruel deed, and only sweet
To the bigot's blighted brain.

358

THE KING'S HEAD AT TAMWORTH.

When I draw up the curtain this time, readers, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large-figured papering on the wall as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints.-JANE EYRE.

LITTLE more than ten years have elapsed since I took my place in Liverpool on the morning of the 30th of January, and in due time arrived at Tamworth station. On asking as to the prospect of reaching Nottingham that evening, the reply was not consoling-"No train before half-past seven, and that only to Derby!"

But before attempting to abuse the authorities for their untoward arrangement, or trying to enlist the reader on my side, it is but fair to own that the 30th of January was a Sunday. Verdict, "Served you right!" would, no doubt, be the finding of most good people; that stricter part of the community, who maintain the doctrine of cold meat and non-locomotion on the first day of the week.

I had little excuse to plead. I was on my way from Ireland, hastening to get the two last days of pheasant shooting. The laws are stringent as to the destruction of these birds ceasing about this time, but the precise day is enveloped in mystery, for while some maintain that with the last day of January the slaughter (for so it generally is) ends, there are many who read the law as extending the period four-andtwenty hours longer, and have their final and grand battue the 1st of February. But country gentlemen, like lawyers and every one else, "differ." Dan O'Connell said there never was an act of parliament so framed "but he could drive a coach-and-four through it;" and what would be the use of lawyers if acts of parliament were so framed as to be intelligible? As they never are, I dismiss the subject, and return to the Sunday.

It was the 30th of January. I had thus two days left, provided I got to my journey's end within the next twelve hours, and that mine host read the law in the most extended sense, and did not wish to save his pheasants did he think the other way, the betting could only be even, and there was but one day. It was, therefore, a bore to be detained all Sunday at Tamworth, and to find that one could not get further than Derby that night.

Something very nearly approaching to an oath, only it was not one, escaped as I saw my gun-case and effects placed upon a platform, and elevated by machinery to the upper regions of the station-house on the other line and level, from whence the departure for Derby was to take place at the above-mentioned hour.

There were then nearly six hours to kill.

"Which is the way to the head inn ?"

"You cannot mistake it, sir. Straight on-the King's Head."

So off I set to the King's Head in search of food and shelter, for the rain began to descend, and added fresh gloom to my prospects. At the King's Head-not our first Charles, he is never selected for the portrait of a king's head; Henry VIII., though, often, probably because the pictures represent him fat and jolly, Falstaff-like, what mine host would

wish to be or to persuade the vulgar his good cheer would make them; some of the Georges, for the same reason, come in for their share of public approbation in the hanging line as signs. A spruce-looking landlady makes her appearance, and eyes one with a suspicious glance, as much as to say, "Where is your baggage? what good will you be to us? are you to be trusted ?"

"I have come in search of food and shelter; I am going on to Derby to-night, but cannot do so before seven o'clock. Can I have some dinner?" Certainly, sir. Here, Elizabeth, show this gentleman into the

coffee-room.'

COMMERCIAL ROOM was printed in large letters over the door, and one commercial ambassador was seated at the table, making up his accounts (Sunday), and writing letters; his gig-box was by his side.

"I want some dinner-what can I have?"

Ude is dead, but lives in print; poor Soyer, too, immortalised by Punch when in Ireland as the "Broth of a boy," and since his Crimean campaign, now no more. Poor fellow, Soyez tranquille! Mrs. Glasse and her old hare, what would they have said to Elizabeth's reply, "Rumpsteaks, sir?"

A good story is told of Ude when he lived at Quorn with Lord Sefton, and some one, coming in very late, asked for anything that could be had at once-a beefsteak. Well, a beefsteak was ordered by Lord Sefton for his friend, an agricultural acquaintance, no doubt. The order was taken to the kitchen, but it so happened that there was no kitchen-maid present, and the message was taken straight to headquarters, to the chef himself. What was to be done? certainly not the beefsteak. The chef swore lustily at the footman, and declared he had never heard of such a thing, and that he would have nothing to say to it. "What answer, then, am I to take to his lordship-he will be very angry

?"

"You may go tell milor I be dam-I make one beeftake!"

Well, to return to my question to Elizabeth as to what I could have for dinner, her reply was, "Rumpsteak, sir."

"How dreadful!" will be the exclamation from some would-be swell, who would affect to be horrified by even beefsteak; but the Ude of the King's Head at Tamworth had probably never heard of filets de sole à la maître d'hôtel, côtelettes à la Soubise, or riz de veau, under any disguise, so Mr. Would-be-Swell, who talks a good deal before the uninitiated as to what a good dinner should be, and whose superficial knowledge in the gastronomic art has been picked up by study from the carte at his club (not a bad one either), let me remind him of the saying, "When you are in Turkey do as the Turkeys do;" so when you are detained in Tamworth on a Sunday, and stopping at the King's Head, do as the commercial gentry do; and so I did, and ordered a beefsteak.

This done, I went to the window. Not a soul moving in the streets; the shops, of course, shut. No amusement to be looked for in that line. Where is the population? not a soul moving, not an umbrella discernible. Perhaps all in church, "where you ought to have been, instead of travelling on a Sunday," whispers the advocate of cold meat.

STEVENSON, TAILOR AND DRAPER,

flourished in white and gold letters over a door directly in front of the