answer. Their trade was decreasing-the public ran daily more and more to the cheap show shops-and they themselves were forced, in order to compete with these latter, to put more and more of their work out at contract prices. Facilis descensus Averni! Having once been hustled out of the serried crowd of competing workmen, it was impossible to force our way in again. So, a week or ten days past, our little stocks of money were exhausted. I was downhearted at once; but Crossthwaite bore up gayly enough.

Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling over it. And, thank God, I have no children, and never intend to have, if I can keep true to myself, till the good times

come."

"Oh! Crossthwaite, are not children a blessing?"

"Would they be a blessing to me now? No, my lad. Let those bring slaves into the world who will! I will never beget children to swell the numbers of those who are trampling each other down in the struggle for daily bread, to minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich man's luxury-perhaps his lust."

"C Then you

believe in the Malthusian doctrines?"

"I believe them to be an infernal lie, Alton Locke; though good and wise people like Miss Martineau may sometimes be deluded into preaching them. I believe there's room on English soil for twice the number there is now; and when we get the Charter we'll prove it; we'll show that God meant living human heads and hands to be blessings and not curses, tools and not burdens. But in such times as these, let those who have wives be as though they had none-as St. Paul said, when he told his people under the Roman emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of the people should keep himself as free from incumbrances as he can just now. He will find it all the more easy to dare and suffer for the people, when their turn comes

And he set his teeth firmly, almost savagely.

"I think I can earn a few shillings, now and then, by writing for a paper I know of. If that won't do, I must take up agitating for a trade, and live by spouting, as many a Tory member as well as Radical ones do. A man may do worse, for he may do nothing. At all events, my only chance now is to help on the Charter; for the sooner it comes the better for me. And if I die-why the little woman won't be long in coming after me, I know that well; and there's a tough business got well over for both of us!"

"Hech," said Sandy,

"To every man

Death comes but once a life

as my countryman, Mr. Macaulay says, in thae gran' Roman ballants o' his. But for ye, Alton, laddie, ye're owre young to start off in the People's Church Meelitant, sae just bide wi' me, and the barrel o' meal in the corner there winna waste, nae mair than it did wi' the widow o' Zareptha; a tale which coincides sae weel wi' the everlasting righteousnesses, that I'm at times no inclined to consider it a'thegither mythical."

But I, with thankfulness which vented itself through my eyes, finding my lips alone too narrow for it, refused to eat the bread of idleness.

Aweel, then, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust books whiles; I'm getting auld and stiff, and ha' need o' help i' the business."

"No," I said; "you say so out of kindness; but if you can afford no greater comforts than these, you can not afford to keep me in addition to yourself."

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Hech, then! How do ye ken that the auld Scot eats a' he makes? I was na born the spending side o' Tweed, my man. But gin ye dauer, why dinna ye pack up your duds, and the poems wi' them, and gang till your cousin i' the university? he'll surely put you in the way o' publishing them. He's bound to it by blude; and there's na shame in asking him to help you toward reaping the fruits o' your ain labors. A few punds on a bond for repayment when the edition was sauld, noo, I'd do that for mysel'; but I'm thinking ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers. Dinna mind your independence; it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken; and thae bit ballants will be their money's worth, I'll warrant, and tell them a wheen facts they're no that well acquentit wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist ?"

"Puir sugar-and-spice-selling baillie bodie! is there aught in his ledger about poetry, and the incommensurable value o' the products o' genius? Gang till the young scholar: he's a canny one, too, and he'll ken it to be worth his while to fash himsel' a wee anent it."

So I packed up my little bundle, and lay awake all that night in a fever of expectation about the as yet unknown world of green fields and woods through which my road to Cambridge lay.

CHAPTER XI.

"THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE."

I MAY be forgiven, surely, if I run somewhat into detail about this my first visit to the country.

I had, as I have said before, literally never been farther afield than Fulham or Battersea Rise. One Sunday evening, indeed, I had got as far as Wandsworth Common; but it was March, and, to my extreme disappointment, the heath was not in flower.

But, usually, my Sundays had been spent entirely in study; which to me was rest, so worn out were both my body and my mind with the incessant drudgery of my trade, and the slender fare to which I restricted myself. Since I had lodged with Mackaye, certainly, my food had been better. I had not required to stint my appetite for money wherewith to buy candles, ink, and pens. My wages, too, had increased with my years, and altogether I found myself gaining in strength, though I had no notion how much I possessed till I set forth on this walk to Cambridge.

It was a glorious morning at the end of May; and when I escaped from the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I found the sky a sheet of cloudless blue. How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses, which lined the road for miles-the great roots of London, running far out into the country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food, and merchandise, and human beings-the sap of the huge metropolitan life-tree! How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas, till hope deferred made the heart sick, and the country seemed-like the place where the rainbow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana settlers always a little farther off! How, between gaps in the houses, right and left, I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields, shut from me by dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and speculate on the names of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead-something really worth stopping to look at till the houses thickened again into a street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the midst of a town! And then more

villas and palings; and then a village; when would they stop. those endless houses?

At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I passed began to look more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, cattle yards and farm buildings appeared; and, right and left, far away, spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and corn fields. ~ Oh, the joy! The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate hue and scent of the fresh clover fields, the steep clay banks where I stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child, and then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank toward the Red House. I hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the checkered squares of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the growing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence! I listened to the stillness; for noise had been my native element; I had become in London quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire and dirt. And now, for the first time in my life, the crushing, confusing hubbub had flowed away, and left my brain calm and free. How I felt at that moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as new to me, as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position. I can not help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement, physical as well as moral, is to -blame for very much of the working-men's restlessness and fierceness. As it was, I felt that every step forward, every breath of fresh air, gave me new life. I had gone fifteen miles before I recollected that, for the first time for many months, I had not coughed since I rose.

So on I went, down the broad, bright road, which seemed to beckon me forward into the unknown expanses of human life.

The world was all before me, where to choose,

and I saw it both with my eyes and my imagination, in the temper of a boy broke loose from school. My heart kept holiday. I loved and blessed the birds which flitted past me, and the cows which lay dreaming on the sward. I recollect stopping with delight at a picturesque descent into the road, to watch a nursery garden, full of roses of every shade, from brilliant yellow to darkest purple; and as I wondered at the

innumerable variety of beauties which man's art had developed from a few poor and wild species, it seemed to me the most delightful life on earth, to follow in such a place the primæval trade of gardener Adam; to study the secrets of the flower world, the laws of soil and climate; to create new species, and gloat over the living fruit of one's own science and perseverance. And then I recollected the tailor's shop, and the Charter, and the starvation, and the oppression, which I had left behind, and ashamed of my own selfishness, went hurrying on again.

At last I came to a wood-the first real wood that I had ever seen; not a mere party of stately park trees growing out of smooth turf, but a real wild copse; tangled branches and gray stems fallen across each other; deep, ragged underwoods of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' feathers, and gay beds of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting about them, and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough to bough—a poor commonplace bit of copse, I daresay, in the world's eyes, but to me a fairy wilderness of beautiful forms, mysterious gleams and shadows, teeming with manifold life. As I stood looking wistfully over the gate, alternately at the inviting vista of the green embroidered path, and then at the grim notice over my head, "All trespassers prosecuted," a young man came up the ride, dressed in velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, sufficiently bedrabbled with mud. A fishingrod and basket bespoke him some sort of destroyer, and I saw in a moment that he was a gentleman." After all, there There are men

is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. whose class no dirt or rags could hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentlemen-by whom I do not mean just now the rich-have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this " coarseness," &c., &c., for the list is too long to specify, be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.

May I go into your wood ?" asked I at a venture, curiosity conquering pride.

"Well! what do you want there, my good fellow?"

"To see what a wood is like-I never was in one in my life."

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Humph! well-you may go in for that, and welcome. Never was in a wood in his life! poor devil!"