once angelic goodness-her love, pity, mercy, and charity. Else had these softening and restraining virtues died and departed altogether from this earth; and Man, untaught by the example of Woman-unfearing to offend her better affectations-had been a pitiless savage-more cruel than tigers thirsting for more blood-delighting in destruction-hardened as flint to the gently-touching hand of tenderness-unsoftened by a tear-deaf to supplication-unsubdued by the tender tone or prayer of Pity. The heart of Man would have been as the heart of a wild beastnay, worse-had not Woman kept it human. ness. Gentle Woman is the great humanizer. Man may, in his pride, think himself "the paragon of animals” -Woman out-paragons him in the better qualities of human nature. Is he a brute-she is full of gentleIs he harsh and hard-she is soft and compassionate. Is he full of hate-she is overflowing with love. Is he faithless-she is true to the death. Is he for revenge-she is for forgiveness. Is he for condemnation-she is for mercy. Is he sick-she is ever at his side. Is he in trouble-she sustains him. Do friends fly from him-she cleaves the closer to him, fast as the living ivy to the decaying oak, though falling. Is he fortunate who rejoices so singly in his welfare, for himself alone? Woman can be all this, and a hundred times as much. A noble, true Man is (who shall gainsay it?) "a glorious human creature," which the angels of Heaven might contemplate with admiration, and perhaps do; but a noble, true Woman, God himself looks admiringly upon her, and loves her, as her heavenly Father! Oh! think of these things, and of the precious trust committed to your charge, ye lovely, misled gentlewomen, whom fashion has perverted, and thoughtlessness, not estrangement of the heart, has led away. A noble poet-and an affectionate one-has said of ye, that "One only care your gentle breasts should move: It is so love, and all that appertains to it, and is akin to it-among which kind brotherhood and sisterhood are pity, and mercy, and "conscience, and tender heart." "All thoughts, all passions, all delights. And feed its sacred flame." Delight, if you will, in "witching the world with noble feats of horsemanship," but forget not that ye are women even in that bold accomplishment: never, oh never lead, or even follow, in pursuits which are in their very nature cruel, and, however excusable in men, are inexcusable in woman! "Ye gentle ladies! in whose soveraine power And the hearts of men as your eternal dower, Lest, if men you of cruelty accuse, He from you take that chiefdome which ye do abuse." So advises that gentlest of poets, Spenser: listen to him, if not to me; and listen to your own hearts, whose "still, small voice" must silently reprove ye! 1 THE MAN WITHOUT A SHILLING. BALLOONING-HUMOURS OF LONDON MOBS-PICKPOCKETS -MR. GUMPTION-MR. GABBS-ETC., ETC. I AM not a dealer in dogmas: I do not pretend to descry undiscovered worlds through the eye of a mill-stone; nor do I wish to be thought wise in my own conceit: but yet I cannot in all things pin my faith upon So-and-so's sleeve; I cannot always see. things as Such-a-one sees them: nor can I beg the loan of his eyes to economize the use of mine; and if I could, I should, perhaps, take leave to glance about me in my own old camera obscura way of viewing the world as it wags: I should still persist in seeing what there is to see in my own weak, winking fashion, and look at things neither "new nor strange" through an old and strange medium of my own. New truths, and "good truths," too, go out like bubbles: they are seen for a minute, and admired for their brilliancy and rainbow-coloured beauty, and, blown upon, burst, "melt into thin air," are no more seen, and we know not where they go, nor what becomes of them. But lies-what vitality, what immortality there is in every lie! Scotch it-beat out its brains-cut it up limb by limb-carbonado itdress it and treat it as you would a collop-carve it into half inches like an eel snipped for stewing-snap it into small pieces as you would a pipe of macaroni -leave it for a moment, return to it, and "the creature's at its dirty work again"-wriggling, twisting, frisking, "all alive and leaping"-not a whit the worse for all your "murderous work"-its disse vered parts and parcels again one entire whole, and the reembodied creature as "lively and full of vent" as ever! It has made up its mind not to die, or, at the least, that you cannot kill it. The hundred heads of Hydra are not more indifferent to your daring attempts to "dot and carry one" of its polypus-like excresences away with you: a sturdy old monarch trée of the forest is not more indifferent to your axe and saw: if you lop off ten of its hundred arms, its remainder ninety are only the stronger and stouter for your pains. One of the hundred-limbed, ninety-nine-lived lies which live in this world, as though they would never die and grow old, is this-that "Poverty is the nurse of crime." On the contrary, I contend that if there was nothing but poverty in this world there would be almost an end of crime-it would go out and be extinct, for crime will not work the evil it does if it is not paid, and well paid, for its labour: wealth, more or less, is its wages; if you cannot pay for it down goes its tools-it strikes for its "present pay and good quarters," and not all that Messrs. Smith and Malthus could say on the article Wages" could persuade it to return to its task, and resume its labours. Poverty the nurse of crime," forsooth!— That is as it happens. She might nurse a new Curtius or Cincinnatus. If, poor old soul, she is compelled, for a living, to go out as monthly nurse, wet nurse, or dry nurse, it is "Hobson's choice," not her's: it is a matter of indifference to her who it is she nurses. The poets, it is true, 66 "Vain men in their mood, And travelling with the multitude," .6 have called her hard names; but poets are not much to be depended upon: ask their creditors, and they will say they are not. They have said that she "parts good company ;" and then, with their usual inconsistency, they assert that she "makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows!" They have called her" everything but a gentlewoman.". One homely, honest, feeling, fine fellow of a poetnot to be deceived by old prejudices-alone had the manliness to call her "honest Poverty, and a' that!" -and as he had known her too long to be mistaken about her character, he " up" with all he knew of her-his testimony had its weight with the jury, and she was honourably acquitted. "Poverty the nurse of crime!" Go to! He that said it was some wealthy fool with gold in store," who knew not the virtue and white innocence of Poverty-her charities -her compassions-her blessings-her only real independence!—for it would be easy to prove that she only can boast of independence, and by a thousand ready examples; but one will do. 66 Being touched and swayed by the errors common to the rest of the world, I had had my doubts of the moral character of "all-scorned Poverty," as Shakspeare, who should have known better, inconsiderately calls her: but (better late than never!) a new light has broken in upon my darkness, and I humbly acknowledge that I have been hitherto but a mole, a blind-worm, a bat, and have groped about in the twilight of Truth, not in her broad open daylight. "All the world and his wife" were at Vauxhall the other day to assist, as the French say, at Mr. Green's experimental journey from this low world to a loftier -an exhibition which, if it does nothing else, draws many millions of eyes from poring upon this earth to glance for a few moments towards heaven, and perhaps lifts their minds to "ponder on the skies." The majority of mankind seem so wrapt up in this world, that they altogether forget that there are other worlds: they forget even that there is a sky over their heads. |