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THE PEERAGE OF POVERTY.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORDER OF VAGABONDS, AND THE TRIUMPHS OF

POVERTY.

SHALL not soon forget how, one summer evening, some years since, I found myself in a remote country town on the borders of Wales. The night was deepening, and some drops of rain were falling, as I left my inn, to stroll through the streets. By the Town Hall, a little company was gathered round a man, whom I supposed at first sight to be a mere "Cheap Jack;" but I had not listened long before I found that I was standing before a really remarkable human eccentricity; he was ostensibly selling pens-glass pens, but about them not one word did he say. No! but his speech meandered along in the true style of a somewhat uncombed philosopher who loved to hear himself talk. And there he was, as it turned out, a genuine Peripatetic; a board of pens was suspended round his neck, a light placed on the board, by the rays of which the man was revealed, about forty a fine Italian face, a bright clear eye; he talked on, without any regard to form; the words and ideas fell and fitted together; he made no effort to talk, used no action; but, in the course of the evening, he threw out over the minds of the people-light, genuine light, social, political, literary, philosophical; there were no wild theories, no

chartist freaks of speech; no denominational, no sectarian homilies; there was no wildness, but a queer and quaint originality. "I belong," said he, "to the Ancient Order of Vagabonds. There is nothing disgraceful," continued he, "in that order; it has ever been a race of wanderers; that is all the name implies. You are here," he said, " on the banks of the Wye. The Romans called your beautiful river Vaga, that is, the wanderer-a beautiful vagabond. I belong to the Order of Vagabonds. I am like your river, bound to wander. Abraham was a vagabond: he too 'went out not knowing whither he went;' all the Patriarchs were vagabonds: they confessed themselves 'strangers and pilgrims.' Your rich worldly ones would have called Christ a vagabond: 'He had not where to lay His head.' Many of the fathers of the church—the great missionaries and teachers-have been vagabonds. Some have even been punished as such. I like the freedom and the variety of the life. I belong to the Ancient Order of Vagabonds." And this vagabond was indeed one of a most extraordinary order. I waited, expecting that some meaning would disclose itself in the course of his speech; but no! he continued to utter a plentiful stream of truth and happy expression-all flung out carelessly. It arrested all the casual passers-by; the mayor of the town was on his way to the Hall, to listen to a lecture by a person of some importance in the neighbourhood; but he was stopped by the spell of the speech of this Knight of the Order of Vagabonds. Many persons of intelligence stood there, surprised to hear spoken so, in the market-place, words of a higher, deeper, and better order, united to sentiments of a more philosophic character, than is often found from the lecturer's desk or the preacher's pulpit.

And he was right: rightly interpreted, the order of vagabonds has been a most illustrious knighthood, and may be backed for the splendour of its achievements against any order whatever. Nay, all the old knights themselves were wandering vagabonds, plunging abroad through the forest

HANS HOLBEIN'S TRIUMPH OF POVERTY.

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and the highway, through city and kingdom, in adventure and knight errantry. Thus the restless tribes of colonists have ever in all ages plunged across the marches, or the friths and wider oceans: Pilgrims, Palmers, Crusaders-of Faith, Freedom, Labour or Trade; the nomadic hordes, the wandering Bedouins of Industry. Man will go upon his travels. He cannot well settle down in a Mongolic dynasty. By travel he accumulates the wisdom of ages. Thus he ferries to and fro the great truths of all time from the continents of ideas. It is by fluctuation that all things become fixed, it is by restlessness that they become permanent.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Some of my readers may have seen the sketch from the design of a great painting by Hans Holbein, the younger, painted by him for a company of German merchants in London, and suspended in the Hall of the Easterlings in London, and called "The Triumph of Poverty."

After the

allegoric fashion of that age of painting, he represented Poverty leading on, in the procession, the various powers of the human mind and capacities of human endeavour, making them all subservient to triumph at last. Even Stupidity, and Ignorance, and Inattention, have to bow and yield to her mild and beautiful sway, while the tribes of mendicity and misery, following in the steps of Labour, and even cheered on by Poverty, change their character and their destination. Hope, Industry, Utility, and Memory, elevated aloft, follow in the bright procession. Poverty herself is represented as a beautiful creature, rather calculated to inspire affection than to repel from her side. The same painter drew also a companion portrait, "The Triumph of Riches," in whose procession blind Fortune leads on all the illustrious and wealthy names of the earth. But the procession and triumph of riches does not equal in sublimity the moral majesty of poverty; but perhaps Hans Holbein, and many

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another like him, had formed altogether a different idea of poverty to that we have associated with it. It was the antithesis to luxury, the relief from the congestion of wealth and the plethora of possessions; not the grinding, carecompelling taskmaster who goads on his victim to starvation, despair, and suicide.

For now Poverty rounds many a speech, and often gives grace to the verses of the Poets; but nobody likes much to meet her on the highway of life; it is best to compliment her at a distance: “absence makes the heart grow fonder." Yet Poverty has been the great world-worker; the greatest things have been achieved by Poverty, and the reason is obvious "Necessity is the mother of invention." The brain of Poverty frequently has had to scheme for the stomach. There were no flattering parasites standing by to lend the willing hand; Poverty had to perform its labours alone; it had to execute its own perceptions. Independence, and Effort, and Success were all born from the same family stock as Poverty. The lowly man can do many things the lofty cannot do, cannot even attempt to do; hence, freedom of speech, that magnificent eloquence, which rushes like a strong wind through the soul, and stirs the spirits of men in vast buildings, has often been associated with a lowly life. The earth is covered with the monuments piled by Poverty. What could Capital do without Poverty? Is it not indispensable that if the hand is to perform anything the mind must be unembarrassed, except with the great object upon which its central intensity is fixed? Luxury cannot serve the world; it is fastidious; it is timid; tremulously it shrinks from before its opportunities; but Poverty-it is not fearful, it has nothing to lose it wraps its serge garment or blanket around it, and goes forth as a prophet and a missionary. It seizes the axe, and plunges into the wilderness, to fell forests, and bid young plantations rise; it makes its looms and rears its factories, and spins its flax, its silks, its cotton; makes its cordage for shipping, and pictured elegancies for

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