I am not going, let me say once and for all, to solve one of the insoluble problems, which, wherever the human intellect has been awakened, have perplexed the wise; I propose simply to consider, side by side, the efforts of two mighty geniuses to draw light from this darkness, to educe order out of this perplexity; geniuses themselves widely different, in ages which present more points of contrast than of similarity. We may perhaps venture to draw from their success and failure some hints for ourselves as to the limits of such enquiries, the spirit in which they should be pursued, and the nature of the results to be expected from them.

The struggle, of which this fable of Prometheus is the type, has been imagined, thought, and acted under many forms; but it was more than a chance sympathy which moved the young apostle of intellectual freedom to clothe his inspiration in the old Greek vesture; to catch the Æschylean fire across the gulf of time, and to hold it forth, heightened with his own, a beacon to the next aspirant in the Promethean festival.

Æschylus lived in the youth of Hellenic



freedom. He was a poet of Athens, when, suddenly released from pupilage, and led by heroes of her choice, she had quelled barbarian arrogance. He had fought at Marathon. How could he not glory in her strength? Was it not that which had nerved his arm, which “throbbed through all his pulses like a God’s,” whether he fought himself, or sang “the auspicious march of complete men?” Could there be misgivings, where freedom had so triumphed? yet if there was no misgiving, there was perplexity, and it was the very fact that theirs was a reasonable freedom, that made this possible. For while the sense of law, which in Sophocles gives rise to farther questionings, had as yet hardly taken an abstract shape; political emancipation had left the spell of the old religion as powerful as ever. A great mind, reverent in proportion to its love of truth and goodness; a poet, clinging to the past; a statesman, sympathizing in the practical difficulties of his countrymen, could not divest himself of this; least of all could the mind of Æschylus, with all its healthy vigour, so capable of impressions of vague awe.

There was no thought then of abandoning the old mythology; it was their heirloom from the past, and in it they had to read a present lesson. Now its most prominent features had come down to them from kingly times. The dynasty of Jove was but the mirror of a patriarchal monarchy. But to the Athenian of the age of Cleisthenes, the figure of a patriarchal monarchy had little meaning. As he listened to an Homeric recitation, the words “Father of Gods and men” might sound pleasantly to him; but in his ordinary mood, how could he think of Zeus as monarch and not as tyrant of the world? This was the meaning of that word monarch, which had been doubly branded on his life by Hellenic tyranny and Oriental despotism. How could Zeus be king, and not wish to govern all things by his own will? How a despot, and not fear, as he was feared by, all? How could he be a tyrant, and not surrounded by the fear and hatred of his ministers, the cry of the oppressed, and the defiance of the inextinguishable spirit of human freedom? It was this sense, that human reason must be free, mixed with religious awe for that which in some lights was a phantom of capricious power, which raised for the Greek those contradictions between reason and experience, morality and religion, which have been the arena of speculation in all ages; and which, even when only partly solved, as some of them never can be fully, not only clear the intellect, but give range to action.

But this was not all. Behind the Olympic dynasty there was dimly seen the groundwork of a yet earlier system, a cosmogony rather than a mythology, in which the powers of nature appeared, no longer in their pristine vividness, but in the distance, shadowy and grey with time. In the speculations which even then religious feeling did not prohibit, these aboriginal Pelasgic Gods might be played off against their successors; or the idea of succession might naturally suggest an usurpation; or, lastly, if the reign of Zeus had a beginning, might it not also have



an end? The element of uncertainty thus already introduced was counterbalanced, in the invariable craving of the mind for rest, by a notion which was peculiarly Greek; which is, in fact, a sort of impersonal abstraction of divine power. A blind fate was a consoling refuge from the caprice of an all-powerful will.

The sudden rise of Athenian freedom, and its triumph over despotism on the one side, on the other the old Homeric creed, co-existing with the remains of one still earlier; and fate, the dominant idea of the old Greek mind, must be all considered by us, if we would understand the position of Æschylus rightly. And we must add this consideration, that in interpreting his thoughts, we must of necessity use a language which would have been unfamiliar to him. It was not the Hebrew prophet only, who, in the questionings of his spirit, knew not all it signified; there is much too in the Greek, and above all in Æschylus, the least conscious and most suggestive of poets, which in order to make fully intelligible we must develop. I know that there is danger in this principle, if indiscreetly used, and I shall not attempt to rationalize the details of the mythology. I shall not even ask whether Io means the moon and Argus the starry heaven, or what else they may signify; nor seek to determine how much is meant to be symbolical, how much is merely accessory. There is enough in the story as it tells itself, to lead us to the poet’s meaning. Whatever significance had once been wrapt up in Io, was probably lost to him. It was enough for his purpose that her story was one of suffering, and that suffering at the hand of Zeus.

Neither shall I enquire whether the play had a political meaning. Even if it had, though this might somewhat modify our view, it is the speculative struggle which is revealed in it, rather than the immediate object, which would have an interest for us.

But had space permitted, I should have been tempted to dwell at some length on the dramatic power, which, in a plot so sublimely simple, Æschylus has so strikingly displayed. They are broad touches certainly, but each one is a masterstroke. He was no ordinary delineator of character, who could thus individualize for us not only the unattainable, yet human majesty of the Titan, and the servile, courteous bearing of the tyrant’s messenger, but old Oceanus, vacillating between friendship and timid duty (like the old men of Colonus, between routine and pity), and his daughters, like true women, sacrificing themselves, with uncalculating faithfulness, at the shrine of heroism.

Before going further, it will not be amiss, perhaps, to paraphrase the story:

“The god of fire, at the command of the king of heaven, rivets in a desert glen, by means of Strength and Force, his servile ministers, his kinsman, the wise author of human improvement. All nature groans together with the mighty sufferer, while the race of men, in the captivity of their benefactor, suffer the extreme of misery. But he endures, and resolutely defies the will of Zeus; revealing to those amazed at his hardihood the secret of his strength, the knowledge, namely, hidden from their abject minds, that even Zeus is subject to the inscrutable power of fate, and that a day shall come, when his tyranny over the human race shall be at an end. For these threats he is buried beneath the earth amid the war of elements, still confident, and destined to emerge at the fated period.”

Even this rude sketch makes it apparent, that we have here the interminable struggle of human will and reason against a divinely imposed necessity. We are promised that it shall be delivered some day, though not till bowed with myriad pains and woes; extricated, not by its own skill, but by



the might of destiny; which shall one day end the tyranny which now fills earth and heaven. The “Prometheus Unbound” of Æschylus is lost to us, and few losses of the kind are more to be regretted; for although the fragments which remain to us show only that, like the centre piece, it would have appeared to us disfigured by that mythological geography, which, however, for the hearers of Æschylus must have had so great a charm, much of it would doubtless have been interesting to all time. Yet it fortunately matters little, by what mythological artifice, whether, like Pindar, by the marriage of Thetis to a mortal, or by whatsoever other device, he obtained a reconcilement. The interesting point is, that the end was reconcilement and not victory, and of this we may be sure; for not only is it abundantly certain, that no representation at a religious festival of the final overthrow of Zeus would in that age have been perpetrated or endured; not only does the form of the myth elsewhere (by no means a strong reason in itself) sanction such a view, but the whole spirit of Æschylus, and the analogy of his other works, demands it.

It is the characteristic of the ancient poets, that they are not carried away by their own creations. They feel with them, they act in them, and yet they are above them. We are not to suppose that all the words of Prometheus or of Antigone are the words of the poet; they are the words which the highest type of human nature, when involved in given circumstances, naturally utters. “He who has his foot free,” the chorus or Oceanus, may give the truest admonitions, though himself of an inferior clay. So we cannot doubt that much of what Prometheus says, however any one would for the moment sympathize with it, must have savoured both to the audience and to the author of impiety; whereas the warnings of the trembling chorus, or of the aged time-server, however little calculated to give comfort, must have at least seemed true.

Again, when we think of the language in which Zeus is spoken of in other plays, we cannot suppose that the representation of him in the “Prometheus Bound” is not partly due to the sufferer’s own state of mind, or that in concluding the story something of that gnawing sense of wrong would not be cleared away. Lastly, the analogy of the Eumenides is of itself enough to prove that in the “Prometheus Unbound” of Æschylus, not victory but reconcilement was the consummation. As in that grand old drama the inutterings of the Furies gradually subside, and all ends in peace; so in this it would seem probable, not that the ways of Zeus were justified to men,—that could not be whilst they conceived of him as like themselves,—but that he would be represented as pacified; and the spirit of Prometheus, not as humbled indeed, nor broken, but satisfied, and acknowledging that in pain he had spoken hastily. How this was brought about we know not, except that the eternal agency of Fate determined it, and that it was effected by the hand of Hercules. It is indeed at best an uncertain shadow; but let us think, what must have been the loftiness, the serenity, I had almost said the faith of a mind, which, out of such materials could educe even the appearance of a balanced harmony, which through such clouds and darkness could, however dimly, see the end. Is there darkness in our own day, gloomier than this “twilight of the gods?” There is; or rather let us say, there was, for I would speak hopefully. When darkness dwells where light should be, it is deepened not only by contrast but by reaction. The darkness out of which Shelley groped for light was thicker than the haze through which Æschylus strained his vision; and in the Prometheus of Shelley, there is dreary darkness which cannot but be felt, far different from the calm though solemn



earnestness of the old Greek. Shelley could not act; he cried himself to sleep and dreamed; his dream was tinged by recent scenes and struggles. Oppression, bigotry, superstition, tyranny, on the one side; on the other, dark and terrible anarchy, scowled and strove till they destroyed each other, and a fair mirage was spread before his thirsting gaze. It was an avatar of the human intellect, heralded by imagination, as the day is heralded by the rosy arch of morning, spread above the hills.

I shall not attempt to interpret the particular images, or rather phantoms, which occur in this work of Shelley’s; but apart from any such enquiry this is clear, that the one bright spot in his universe, which gives life and brightness to all other things, and which he delights to think of as one day overspreading all, is human reason, perfected by endurance, and deified by love. We must not forget, that it is a work of imagination we are considering; traces occur in it of principles in Shelley’s mind, which we delight to think of as more abiding than the phantasmagoria with which it was then filled. Such is the assertion of an all-merciful Creator of all things good (who is, however, only introduced to contrast with the phantom of superstition), of the power of meekness, and of the original truth and loveliness of Christianity,—though so deformed by bigotry and superstition as to have become the object of his hatred and contempt. Yet, with whatever degree of pleasure we may dwell on these as earnests of possibilities with regard to the whole of Shelley’s mind, they do not enter in any intelligible way into the framework of this drama; as ideas, they are at least dormant for the time. His mind, his universe, is filled with the reflected radiance of his own intellect. The figures in the drama are the creations, or emanations rather, of this alone. Beautiful as they are, we miss in them that fulness of substance and breadth of outline, those deep sonorous voices, which in Æschylus give assurance of a dignified humanity. It is an abstract human nature that is presented to us,—heroic through endurance, divine through love,—yet an ideal so attenuated as to be beyond our sympathies. It is in truth beautiful, but most unsatisfying. We want something more than our own shadow in the cloud, though it have a halo round it, to lift us out of ourselves. The cloud must be pierced for us, and the daylight of our reason must suffer itself to be eclipsed. We know that intellectual progress, aided by philanthropy, must do much to refine and elevate the race; we can imagine a world in which it should be all in all, but it is not that world in which God has placed us.

Whether that bright meteor, the mind of Shelley, could ever have gathered substance from its own nebulous emanations; whether its eccentric whirlings could ever have steadied themselves into an orbit, is a question which has passed from the region of human hopes and fears. Its light was quenched before it had time to settle to an equal ray; but its course was ever upwards. It is harder for us to appreciate what we owe to Shelley, and to Coleridge, and other adventurous spirits of that time, than to see where they missed the mark, and where their aim was misdirected. Shelley’s Cassandra-like cry about the power of love, of however little practical effect, has proved the anticipation of a real revival of Christianity. His bitter outcry against priestcraft (which in its bitterness confounded good and bad) is being repeated nowadays, perhaps with little more discrimination, but with more effect, by a portion of the priests themselves. Who knows, if he might not have been a priest, had he lived now?

But in the allegorical treatment of the emancipation of the human race from evil, he is so far less reverent than the Greek, that he anticipated its accomplishment



as the result, not of the independent ordinance of a higher power, but of the self-working of an inherent energy.

Æschylus felt the need of something to counterbalance the exuberance of liberty. Shelley groaned for the vanity and vexation of spirit, to which, as he brooded over the failure of the French Revolution, all nations seemed to him to be in bondage. Each had an instinctive faith that the refuge he sought for must exist. Each found it for himself in an abstraction; but Æschylus in the abstraction of supernal power, Shelley in that of human freedom.

Bacon has an essay on the Fable of Prometheus, or the Statue of Man; towards the end of which the following grave words occur; “We must, therefore, with a sober and humble judgment, distinguish between humanity and divinity, and between the oracles of sense and the mysteries of Faith, unless a heretical religion and a commentitious philosophy be pleasing unto us.” It is a necessary caution, for human things are after all the shadows of divine; and intellectual idols are the most seductive. It is not the least suggestive feature in it that it bears the authority of the Father of Inductive Science.

There exists in some minds a joyous expectation that science is to regenerate the world; in others, scarce confessed perhaps, the apprehension, that in its progress religion will be overthrown. By far the majority of thinkers are in a state of struggle, longing for the emancipation of the human mind and will from the tyranny of vicious custom and from hurtful errors, from ignorance and wrong; and yet by this very longing for a day of freedom, feeling their powers of action hampered and confused. What are we to say to this? If science is doing much for us, is she to do all? Is faith to be supplanted by reason? Can the human intellect develop human perfection? This is the question, when clearly put, more common in our day than may at first be thought. I will not answer it, but I will point out one or two of the conditions to which reason must submit, if she would work truly, either for herself or for mankind.

I. She must consent to act; the true chain that binds her, the vulture that flaps and gnaws at her, is the vain aspiration after an ideal liberty. No sooner does she submit to her fetters than she moves freely. So contradictory may such truths appear when we express them, yet to no assertion is the assent of experience more undoubting.

II. She must acknowledge that the mass of mankind are incapable of receiving the truth in its highest form, and that science therefore, however valuable may be its indirect effects on life, cannot be the only teacher. Not the least instructive part of the parable, noticed by Bacon, though not by Æschylus or Shelley, is the tale that mortals, having received perpetual youth from heaven, tied it on the back of an ass, which Bacon interprets to be slow experience, and bartered it at the first well they came to for a draught of water.

III. “Let her know her place, she is the second, not the first.” He is the true philosopher, who with a most real reverence for God’s truth as it is revealed in nature and experience, combines a distinct and deeper reverence for yet higher objects,—the objects not of reason but of faith. Such reverence teaches us submission, even to the delay of knowledge. A little altering the line of Æschylus, we remember that human skill is weaker, not than necessity, but than the will of God. The true unbinding of Prometheus is not the triumph of reason, but the reconcilement of science and philosophy with religion. Hitherto their armies have been separated, if not opposed. There has been much impotent authority on the one side, much rebellious feeling on the other; let us acknowledge that in both there has been



much to blame. Yet, if greater blame lie on either side, surely they have more to answer for whose timid want of faith had thrown suspicion on the pursuit of knowledge. It was not unnatural, that each young giant in its turn, geology, ethnology, criticism, comparative mythology, should be eager to prove its weapons, even to presumption. But for the servants of the God of truth to shut their eyes to truth, to anathematize it or to explain it feebly away, this surely was unnatural. And yet they did it ignorantly, and we shall do little good by recalling old offences. Still they stand apart and frown as if no might could reconcile them. And indeed it is not Hercules, nor the intrinsic energy of science, that can do this, but the spirit of a higher wisdom. It would teach religionists, if they would be taught, that the phantom of superstition is the phantom of misguided fear; that the same God who has revealed Himself in the Bible, also reveals Himself in nature and in the mind of man; that science and philosophy also are not the enemies but the servants of God. It would teach the men of science and philosophy to know their calling, to feel their responsibility, and while they reverence the Supreme Intelligence as seen in the eternal laws of nature and of thought, to recognize also the deeper appeal to yet higher faculties and to more human feelings, which is made in the Christian revelation. The light of science and philosophy may be made subservient to this in many ways, may clear it from apprehension, may widen its application, and this surely is their noblest use. In themselves they reveal God to us as the mind of the world, or as its life, or as a power beyond, “in darkness whom we guess.” False religion holds up an imaginary phantom to our fears. It is reserved for Christianity to reveal Him to us as our Father in heaven, reconciling us and all things to each other and to Himself in our Deliverer, who is the Son of Man.

Of all our conceptions there is scarcely one more complex or less susceptible of precise definition than civilization. There is no unity observed in fixing on the principles and characteristics which constitute and limit it. While some, believers in the ultimate destiny of nations, take it to be a progression to better things, the process of attaining an ideal perfect state, others use it as a purely absolute term, a standard of humanity, reached or not reached at different periods; while not a few maintain that it cannot be applied without the union of the two ideas. We know that the old nations rose, advanced, and reached the limit of greatness to which the feeble, because false, means employed could tend, forgot the nobleness of further action, and having fulfilled their mission, came to nought; we know too that, since the dissolution of the Roman empire, from the ruins of which the new barbarian life took form, civilization, cherished by the invigorating influence of Christianity, after bursting through the obstacles that had hitherto impeded its advance, started afresh, and has been like an ever-widening stream, progressing, not without continual partial obstructions, now rapidly, now sluggishly, here in one part of its channel, here in another, and having for its goal an ocean, which we trust is no chaotic one. The highest civilization will be an union of moral, intellectual, and material greatness; these elements work naturally into one another, strengthening and modifying; but unless the last be totally subordinate in aim to the others, nay, unless it be considered



rather as an accident, the civilization attainable will be but a partial one; and it is to the practical ignoring of this truth that the downfall of the old kingdoms may be attributed. Taking then this system of civilization as the only one which can attain any degree of perfection, perhaps the best criterion that its principles are at work in a nation is the increasing value of human life evinced; this bears upon its face a semblance, though unreal, of being dependent upon mere material happiness. The more barbarous the nation the less regardful is it of human life: there is no instance of a savage tribe reaching so high an average of existence as a more civilized state, although it may possess isolated cases of longevity much greater than the latter; and this too is analogous to the intellectual life of nations; but it is collectively, and not by singular instances, that we must estimate a people’s civilization. Now an increasing regard for human life may be fairly taken as an evidence of civilization, inasmuch as it implies increasing absorption of the individual into the common interest; industry and economy in the governed, and wisdom in the governing class; and increasing security, not only from positive criminal violence, but also from causes the operation of which could only be stayed by unselfish motives. That there exists among us at present a vast preventible sacrifice of human life there is no doubt, and it is to the unapplied resources of science, and a wider knowledge of physiology, that we must look for the power of removing the causes. Of the multiform branches of sanitary economy we shall in this paper confine ourselves especially to an enquiry into noxious employments.

The extension of manufactures has doubtless produced additional wealth and capital, but that wealth does not of necessity increase the length of life is manifested by the returns of mortality for Manchester and other towns, contrasted with those from agricultural districts, in which latter we find the labourers, with half the amount of wages, reaching a much higher average of life than the workmen of the towns. Doubtless, machinery, when its appliances have been more fully developed, and its relations to man properly adjusted, will greatly lessen his physical sufferings; this, let us hope, is its Godlike final goal; but how far up to this time it has, directly or indirectly, aggravated or alleviated them, is a question of great intricacy. That unhealthiness in employment is a law of nature is contradicted by evidence of every kind, and it will be a happy thing for any one who may hold that notion to convince himself as early as possible of its entire fallacy. It is this, and other like objections, that have always been in the way of a right-minded social system, and are really but cowardly pleas for indifference. In a land boasting itself so unreservedly of its philanthropy, it is somewhat strange that there should exist a greater ratio of preventible deaths of this kind than in any other state; the duty of charity has become more abstract, and satisfied in a manner more mechanical than was once the case. I have heard the abominable assumption that this mortality is a wise provision of God, to prevent the overflow of population: to those who maintain this it has been put in a clenching manner, that a parish where life is precarious pays more poor-rates than its neighbours; but for their undeserved comfort it may safely be asserted, that a state of society, such as the total absence of these physical evils would imply, could not be behind-hand to discern and arrest any consequent social injury.

Causes of unhealthiness in employments are of two kinds: those which are peculiar and seemingly essential to different trades, and those which do not lie in their nature, but are at present accidental more or less to all, such as want of proper ventilation, deficiency of light, overwork, &c.

We could scarcely, perhaps, select a more flagrant example of an employment deleterious to the health, than the manufacture of lucifer matches. It appears that the fumes of the phosphorus, in which the workpeople are continually enveloped, act upon the teeth and bones of the lower jaw; the bones gradually die, and spongy excrescences grow upon them, and finally the whole or part of the jaw has to be removed, which, if indeed the sufferer survive the operation, is a disfigurement as horrible as any that can well be imagined. Notwithstanding this danger, many, who have been victims of this disease and recovered, return to their former employment. Is there no remedy for this? or are we continually to have the fearful consciousness of encouraging a trade, to the interests of which have to be sacrificed the beauty of the human face and the health of the human body? It was recently discovered by Herr Schrötter, of Vienna, that phosphorus may be prepared so as not to give off any deleterious fumes; nor does the change in the state of the phosphorus thereby produced affect at all the property made use of in the manufacture of the match, which would be a fatal objection to the remedy being adopted.* The chief obstacles to the introduction of the improvement are the increase of price which it would involve, and that spirit of routine which creeps over those occupations wherein little or no exertion of the intellectual faculties is required. “It is a very small matter,” says one. “I do not use a dozen matches in a year.” True, but the injustice done is injustice still, however divided among numbers, and the crimes of communities must receive their due as well as those of individuals. Is, then, denial of the article recommended? By no means, for many reasons; besides, the “amorphous” phosphorus has been tried, and we believe with entire success, by some employers, and the matches made with it are easily distinguished from the ordinary ones; “they are not luminous in the dark under 400°; they have no smell, are not liable to contract damp, and may be placed on a hot mantle-shelf without taking fire, and will keep for any length of time without change.”*

To take another case. Certain articles of cutlery are ground upon dry stones; hence, the air of the room in which the work is carried on, becomes filled with clouds of impalpable powder of steel and stone, which, being inhaled, passes into the lungs, and gives rise to pulmonary affections, and causes a general wasting of the frame. The remedy for this is simple; a thorough ventilation, together with a magnetized guard worn upon the mouth, which withholds the iron dust from passing into the throat. The neglect of this simple device prevents the workmen from seldom exceeding forty, and not often thirty years of age.†

There is no force in the excuse, that men are willing to engage in such employments, with the dangerous or absolutely destructive nature of which they are fully acquainted; and that no injustice can be argued for refusing to spend energy and money to remove evils of which no complaint is made. The skilled workman will always find great difficulty in changing his occupation without loss, and in the majority of cases is absolutely unable to do so; hence the cruelty of reducing him to



the alternative of starvation, or the wasting of his physical powers. Again, there are cases, as above exemplified, wherein skilled workmen have refused to avail themselves of the preventives afforded by science, because the dangers that they incur enhance the rate of wages; arguing, that if all the inconveniences of the employment be removed, such numbers will flock to engage themselves, that their monopoly will be destroyed, and their wages reduced to an ordinary level. What a monopoly is it! a monopoly of those who are willing to stake health and life against a few years of extraordinary prosperity. It is not likely that employers have so unsound a belief in the liberty of the workman, though it is almost impossible to suppose that the small immediate outlay requisite for the amelioration of the evil can have weight with any of them. We must remember, too, that the man who attempts suicide is punished, and that we who look on without doing our utmost to prevent it, are not unblameable; how much less so those who more or less abet him in it?

There are many other occupations, in which the dust or chips of the materials used exert an unhealthy effect, which is, however, obviated or lessened by a little precaution. The miller’s asthma is prevented by a reasonable system of ventilation; the inhaling of dusty particles by the mason, stone-breaker, and men of similar pursuits, is considerably arrested by allowing the growth of the moustache. There are others wherein a constrained position for a length of time produces constitutional disorders and general debility. In this respect the chief sufferers are tailors and shoemakers. Dr. Chambers‡ recommends to bootmakers the use of a table invented by Mr. Sparkes Hall, whereby they may get rid of the necessity of pressing the boot-tree against the stomach, the practice which so fearfully impairs their health; for tailors also various tables have been devised to enable them to keep their work sufficiently close to the eye without compelling the unnatural posture that deforms them. Dr. Chambers also censures the custom of compelling milliners to work in black material by gas or candlelight, whereby they contract ophthalmic diseases. The only reason for it is the assumption that smuts and smoke necessarily fly about from lights, which would irreparably damage other fabrics; the remedy for this is easy, but must be left to the charity of the employer.

These are a few examples of occupations, wherein noxious and poisonous influences are allowed to work unmolested, and where a little knowledge or skill and self-sacrifice would be a remedy, or, at all events, an amelioration; the list might be indefinitely extended, but we can only mention one other, and that because on a subject which should be dear to all Englishmen. Napoleon I. said truly: “Wherever timber can float, there you will find an English cruiser.” The sea indeed has been with reason our dearest household word for many ages; when, therefore, it should be our endeavour to emulate our past by using every means to ensure the success of our voyages, it is a sad reflection upon the present generation, that very many ships are sent to sea in an unseaworthy state, and insufficiently manned. It is difficult to say how far visions of gain have in each case been the cause of these defects; but, though a fearful charge to entertain against any man, it has been complained that the carelessness exhibited by some about the condition in which their ships sail, is owing to their consciousness



that, in case of wreck, the insurances effected upon them will clearly cover all loss. Independently of this sale of human life for gold, apart from this deliberate carelessness, there is quite enough for animadversion in the indifference that will not take the trouble to overlook the state of the ship and crew, and the ignorance of requirements exhibited by many of those whose first duty and ambition it should be to take all possible precautions. This evil has reached such a pitch, that, a short time back, a petition was presented to the Queen by British seamen against the law which obliges them to go to sea in unseaworthy vessels. It is not by such practices that we have obtained our present eminence in naval matters; that was reached in the manner in which men arrive at exalted positions of any kind, by making their work the best in their power, and by using the best means for attaining their object. If we neglect this principle, all the competition in the world will be incapable of retaining us in our position. It is our duty individually to discountenance, and by government to punish, this deception.

Let us now pass from employments which are deleterious in themselves, to those wherein the injury is accidental; and though not so direct and palpable, scarcely less dangerous. It is a fact of the deepest importance, that, in many districts of the metropolis, the poor reach but half the average of life attained by the higher classes, while in agricultural counties the labourers only fall short little more than ten years of the wealthy.* “The life of man is three-score years and ten;” even ten years out of a man’s short existence are much, but when from experience we find, at this late period of the world, that a very large portion of mankind attains an average of only a third of the life allotted by nature, the suspicion cannot help arising, that our means of civilization must be radically wrong. The extent to which those absolute necessaries for healthy existence, proper drainage and ventilation, are neglected, cannot be conceived by those who form their ideas of the habitations of the poor from what they see in passing along the lanes of a village, or the smaller streets of a town. Moreover, the revelations that have been made and are continually being made, accidentally or otherwise, disclose the fact, that often what are outwardly neat-looking houses, are nothing more than whited sepulchres, hiding, under an exterior of comfort, everything that can create pestilence and domestic misery. Doubtless a great stumbling-block to interference in these matters is the dislike and jealousy with which all uninvited intrusion and sympathy is regarded, the extravagant belief in “independence” held by Englishmen, even in the most wretched condition. But this should discourage no earnest-minded person, for there are sufficient devices to which he may resort, without semblance of encroachment. It is this want of comfort that drives so many to the warmth and more grateful aspect of the tap-room, where they more effectually demoralize their faculties and weaken their energies; nor is this neglect of self-reverence and restraint to be entirely attributed to ignorance and viciousness; too much may be traced to the exhaustion and apathy caused by overwork and other evils, incidental to trades, in which the rage of competition and avarice breaks through all ties of sympathy.

A characteristic of the English is that they can never persuade themselves that they are satisfied; we make everything too long, from our sermons and concerts to our school-lessons and manual labour. It is time that something definite be done to prevent the curses resulting from overwork. Within the last ten years the number of pauper



lunatics in England has increased nearly seventy per cent., and that almost entirely owing to this evil. Each day adds more than one to the number of victims; the curse is especially extending among needlewomen and others, where also the fear of debt and the sedentary character of the employment assist to wrench their natural powers.

Passing from overwork, let us advert to a still more universal abuse, the want of proper ventilation in crowded rooms. There is scarcely conceivable a more dangerous occupation than being one of a numerous audience in a large ill-ventilated building, like Exeter-Hall, for instance, and many of our theatres. As a proof of this, any one who takes the trouble may discover that the walls and pillars of the room begin after a time to reek and even stream with the breath that has been exhaled by the assembled multitude; and these gatherings, by temporarily deranging the systems of those present, predispose them for infection, and cause the spread of epidemics.

Crowding of workshops and rooms is as great a bane as any to the interests of the employed. The terrible grotesqueness of the description in Alton Locke of “Conscrumption Ward” affords a too true insight into the widespread system of slop-work tailoring and its results. Mrs. Gaskell also has done great service by putting into form scenes similar, though by no means so painful. It is a melancholy satisfaction that these things have received notice at length, when it was impossible for them to be strained to a greater intensity; it has at least proved this beyond dispute—that Englishmen have a love of order and a belief in work, which even starvation and neglect, mental and bodily, cannot altogether eradicate. Passing by, for want of space, many other incidental evils of like character, there is one to which I would draw particular attention, because so often viewed with indifference; I mean, the want of sufficient light. There is no influence more purifying from brooding humours and morbid impulses than this great element of our existence; it should be enjoyed as much as possible, and habitations should never be selected without a regard to it. There are numberless seemingly unaccountable complaints which experiment would show to be referable to this want.*

And now what hope of amendment do we rely upon? It must not be for a moment supposed that among employers there are not very many noble and good men who do all that lies in their power to render their employments healthy, and are willing to adopt any reasonable suggestion for further improvement. If this were not so, we might indeed despair; had we then spoken on the subject, it would have been in a far different spirit, and with our immediate aim somewhat modified. What we wish to impress upon the mind of the reader is the vast amount of misery and death brought about by preventible causes in employments, the efforts that have been made to lessen this amount, and the duty of all to imitate these attempts. It is a great step in the right direction that these things are beginning to be discussed. From habituation men become blind to the evil features of a system; but when they see that others, men who are often engaged in the same pursuits as themselves, regard them in a different light, they may be induced to avail themselves of neglected advantages, criticise their own apathy, and direct their energies rather to improvement than extension. There is plenty of opportunity and scope for each man to further the development of those agencies whereby the life of man is lengthened and made more full of happiness and content. All need not undertake the same portion of the duty;



for too sensitive minds would be unable to go through the heart-rending and disgusting scenes that must be faced and swept away before anything effectual can be achieved.

I confess that there are many causes for misgiving in this and other aspects of social life at present; but it is to be hoped that it is but a natural overstraining preparatory to a reaction. There is something ominous in the statistics showing the recent increase of crime, while the outcry thereupon and demand for explanations are, on the other hand, signs of a healthy spirit and active determination. It is wonderful how little we know really of some portions of the kingdom—of our mining districts, for instance, the inhabitants of which, one would suppose from our usual method of regarding them, were created to be food for laughter and merry jests to the rest of their countrymen. One distinction should never be lost sight of nowadays, that between order and routine. We are painfully conscious of the sacrifice that the latter has cost us of late: the spirit of it prevents all modification or laying aside of practices which do not answer the requirements of an enlarged knowledge and wider systems. It is, too, an easy explanation to one’s conscience that “What has done for to-day will surely do for to-morrow.” This is regarding the question in that selfish point of view which it is our purpose to reprobate. What has done for you to-day will perhaps do for you to-morrow; but is it so with those under you? is it not too often the case that there is a yesterday whose to-morrow is not similar, and that the place which was yesterday occupied by one, who has given way in the struggle, is to-day taken by a stranger? This makes no difference to you; the strange face is as good as the old one, and the strange hands perhaps as useful as the old ones: but there are others to whom it does make as great a difference as can be made. Consider this, and enquire of yourself whether it is not in your power in some degree



to prevent and abate this evil, being well assured of this, that indifference to others’ misery is a crime that cannot go unpunished.

Although it was late at night, nay, very early in the summer morning, Henry Radcliffe still lay upon his couch before the wide open window. His eyes were weary with watching the sweet stars slowly fade, and the heavy folds of his dressing-gown seemed to weigh him down with inexpressible languor; the thick blue curtains were loaded with the sweet night air, and such a spell rested upon the room that it required a strong effort for Henry to raise his head from his hand and rise slowly, with eyes on the stars all the while.

“Oh!” he sighed, “I would give worlds to know if she is true; I would be willing to die to prove her sincere.”

For he had seen Helen Musgrave as he had never seen her before. Hitherto her conduct to him had been as distant as possible, a cruel thing to an old friend like Henry; but he had been away for a time, travelling on the Continent; and now when he had returned, she greeted him warmly, and during the long summer days they spent together, her manner had been so kind, her behaviour so altered, that he was persuaded she must look on him as on no other man.

But the people in the village talked about Miss Helen strangely; they said Henry was by no means her first lover; that he was not the only one who had



been seen walking with her in the Hall gardens at twilight, talking gently; and they prophesied that he, like others before him, would suddenly leave the Hall on “urgent business.” Such rumours propagated by the servants at the Hall, and gradually working their way upwards in society, could not fail to reach the ears of Henry Radcliffe, but of course he professed not to regard, and to utterly disbelieve them: nevertheless, the unpleasant thought would recur, had she ever been to any one else what she was to him? and—worse still—had another ever been what he was to her?

True, he was not a declared lover, but she could not help seeing how he felt towards her; and she did see it, shamefully triumphing therein. For it pleased her selfish vanity that another should love her, though she was incapable of returning such love; so, as long as no one else divided her attention, she was extremely gracious to Radcliffe. Besides this, he was so vastly improved; a year’s travelling had wrought wonders, and her old playfellow returned to her, a man of polished manners and well-developed intellect. So she was very kind to him. By long experience she knew how most delicately to show her apparent preference for him, and she felt secure in her own marvellous beauty doing the rest. Her mother, a weak and foolish woman, left her entirely to her own will, though during Henry’s visit it had occurred to her that Helen was not behaving quite well to the man to whom she was engaged, in taking so much pleasure in all concerning another. For Helen really was engaged; she found it convenient to be so; it was something to fall back upon after she had won a new heart—to say that there was another whose claims were greater; to express surprise that it was not known, and with false blushes on her beautiful face, to declare that the reason for such kindness as she had shown, such confidence as she had placed. Of course she strove to conceal the fact from Radcliffe; she would not have her pastime broken in upon; and at the time Henry was so perplexed about her, she had been exerting all her arts of fascination for his entanglement.

The result of his self-examination was, that he loved her truly and well, and, poor fellow! that he was sure she was worthy of that love, and returned it! He would put his fate to the test; he would see what the next day should bring forth, when he would tell her of all he felt.

So he greeted her in the morning with a determination to find whether she really cared for him; and perhaps his anxiety was visible, for she tenderly enquired if he was ill, and in many ways testified her concern. He could not pretend to perfect health, for the agitation at his heart produced a throbbing headache; so saying that he thought a stroll in the garden would do him good, he asked her to walk with him; and she gladly (oh treachery, with smiles!) stepped with him through the wide-open window, and silently, slowly, walked across the lawn, through the pure sunshine, and on to the shade of the chestnuts.

Then she spoke at intervals, in a low tone, of the days when they were children together, and by the sweet voice in which she called up its remembrance, invested the old time with far



more delight than had ever belonged to it, making Henry feel as if he had never known her thoroughly till then; and thinking the time was come, he broke forth into a strain of most passionate love. His voice did not rise; it rather sank with the tenderness of his feeling, and at first his speech was confused. Then gathering strength, but not enough to look at her, he went on, telling of his boyish love which she had slighted, of this love of his manhood which—but she stopped him with a quick gesture, and, raising his eyes, he saw her standing before him, pale and calm, with the sunlight falling through a gap in the trees on her fair hair, and trembling with the leaves over her beautiful neck, fading then, and leaving him in deep shadow. He would have spoken again, but again she stopped him, still pitilessly calm; then while he watched her, the sunlight brightened to intensity on her golden head, and a smile came to her eyes, as she said lightly:

“Oh Henry! have you not heard? did they not tell you about Charles Forster? I am engaged to him. You have often met him here.”

But she saw the love going from his face in scorn for her unfaithfulness, so she strove to regain his heart. Sadly she drooped her eyes towards hands folded on her bosom, and letting her bright curls fall as a veil, she stood before him, saying nothing, leaving the beautiful sight to move him.

But when he spoke it was in an altered tone, his soul was full of sorrow for the man whom she was so cruelly deceiving; and she was surprised, almost alarmed, that the first words he uttered were not of himself, but of Charles Forster. All tenderness was gone from his tone; he spoke to her gravely, almost sternly, of her deceit, pleading the cause of her lover as though he himself were in no way concerned, and ended by entreating in a voice shaken with earnestness, that for the love of Heaven she would leave the game she was playing, and be true to herself and her future husband.

Then, turning, he left her standing, looking after him, like a beautiful enchantress at a victim, which, by some charm more potent than her own, has escaped from her spells. But he did not once turn round, so she ran back across the lawn into the house.

Henry would not go to the Hall again; so he wrote to Mrs. Musgrave, saying he was going to London that day. She was much perplexed, and asked Helen if she could account for his sudden departure, but was only more astonished at her daughter’s indifference; so after weakly upbraiding her with giving offence to an old friend, she rambled off to some other subject.

Meanwhile Henry proceeded at once to London, to his home, and he felt, as he was borne swiftly along, as if he had trusted even more of his happiness than he had known to that one venture, and now it was all gone. He could not tell his father, a man of business, what had happened; he would only have been laughed at for his folly in falling in love with such a flirt as Helen Musgrave; and his mother was dead, so he shut that secret up in the storehouse of his heart, to be looked at by himself alone. True, he had one friend, Richard Merton, who was dearer to him than all others, and to whom he had been used to tell his whole soul; but more than a year was gone by since they had parted, and few letters had passed between them, because of Henry’s constant change of residence, and he could not tell whether the old love would return as warmly as ever. Would his friend be the same to him? He could not tell; for a year ago they had boasted to each other that no love more earthly than that of virtue and beauty should ever be their ruling passion. So he said: “None but myself may know of this, and alone will I combat my grief.”

But one love remained to him even yet, that of Art, and now he resolved



to give up himself to that, to live for it, and maybe to die for it. So the first evening he returned home he told his father that there was something he must say to him; but the old man, divining from his steadfast face some grave and important thing, said—

“Not to-night, my son; but in the morning I will hear what you have to say; to-night we will only talk together over the time you have been away.”

After his father had left him, Henry sat up late, but time fled quickly, and whether he would or no, his memory was busy with the last few days, and his heart was troubled; but he was quite sure he did not love Helen Musgrave now; that dream was gone, and for ever; and, as he thought of her, he saw more clearly, as it stood out in relief against the character with which his imagination had invested her, the pitiful meanness of her conduct. Still he felt that the place she had occupied in his heart was empty; there was a cold aching, instead of warm love; he thought the void could never be filled. He tried to pour into it all his love for his father, for his dead mother, but in vain; the chasm remained. So he determined not to think of her more than as she must flash across his mind from time to time; he would never again devote to her all his thoughts, as he was doing now. Before he in this way extinguished the last spark of hope in his heart, a thought came which made him cover his face with clasped hands. If there had been only human obstacles in the way, if, after struggling through many difficulties, he might have found her waiting for him, pure and good as he once thought her, nothing should have separated them. But—oh! she was not worthy; so he resolutely shut the door of his heart against her.

The next morning, entering his father’s study, he looked so ill as to excite anxiety, but he imputed it to the fatigue of travelling, and quietly took a chair opposite his father. Mr. Radcliffe began, “I have something to tell you, my son, and take this the earliest opportunity of doing it. I am happy to say—” but this almost interrogatively—“I am very happy to say, that I believe you have quite conquered the silly notions you had when I last spoke to you on this subject. Of course you know what I mean; in short, Henry, my boy, I want to tell you that it is my particular desire that you should commence studying for the bar.” This was said hurriedly, and was the opening of the flood-gates to Mr. Radcliffe’s eloquence; for he instantly began an harangue on all the advantages which must accrue from such a proceeding, and talked so long and to such purpose, that he regretted not having chosen that profession for himself. Then, having dilated on all his prospective blessings, he turned to his son for an answer. But none was forthcoming, not till Henry was unable any longer to see the joy which the old man both felt and showed; for he would make sure to himself that, as his son gave no answer, he had no objection to raise. Still unwilling to dash all this to the ground, Henry hesitated, but at last, taking courage from the object in view, he spoke resolutely and slowly, telling his father he was in no way changed from the time when they had spoken together on the subject last: and, speaking with real affection, he told how he grieved to disappoint the hopes of such a father, but persisted that he durst not so far contradict the impulse within him as to comply with this wish. He said, “I can be nothing but an artist; I am fit for nothing else; whatever else I may do I should bury my talent; and remember the fate of the servant who hid his lord’s money.”

Mr. Radcliffe looked up, and all the love for his son stormed his heart; looking at him there, so pale and sad, he yielded. Is was a mighty effort; it



was no mean thing to see his only child, for whom, ever since he was a little one on the knee, he had cherished a private though great ambition, throwing himself away as he thought; it was no slight sacrifice to bring his ambition down till its widest scope was the happiness of his child.

And Henry appreciated all this; and his love for his father was increased tenfold as he saw the effort made for his sake, till, by a strange contradictory influence, he felt almost inclined to throw away all except the hope of pleasing his father; but he durst not. Rising, he walked across the room, holding out his hand; it was grasped firmly, and Henry, stooping down, kissed the hand he felt then to be to him the dearest in the world.

But it was many months before he could gather strength to begin the course he had marked out for himself, and then it was with much mistrust and little ambition, only with intense love and earnestness, that he began the life, and took upon himself the name, of an artist.

He had met his old friend again, and found him daily more worthy to be loved, yet no word of the greatest trouble of his life ever passed between them. He knew not why, except that it might be from an indescribable feeling that Merton was concealing from him some like scene in his own life with a jealous care. So from this thought his love for his friend grew more tender, and often, looking into those earnest eyes, he thought he saw reflected his own trouble and struggles. Another thing, too, bound them closely together; Richard was of so delicate a frame of mind and body, that Henry’s manhood seemed needed for them both, and from that circumstance there was a very gentle feeling between the two. One evening, standing with his hand on the lock of his friend’s room, he paused, listening to the rich tones of that familiar voice; for from the dusk there came to his ears, words which had often wandered through his heart, but to which he could never have given such utterance.

• In the greatest battle of his life
• Man stands by himself alone;
• No hand save his and the foe’s to the strife,
• No heart to beat high but his own.

• Yet the war goes on right desperately,
• And whether he stand or fall
• Himself and God alone may see
• Till the judgment day of all.

The low chanting ceased as he opened wide the door, and stood in the gloaming, before the brother of his heart.

Another time, when walking with an old friend, Roger Mackenzie, he was greatly pained by hearing him say Richard Merton was looking ill, and he was the more grieved, because it put a fear of his own into words; so he tried to persuade himself and his companion that it was only a slight paleness, consequent on a head-ache a week before. Nevertheless, he could not banish a troubled feeling, which made him inclined to go at once to Merton, and he smiled at himself as he found that he wanted to be sure of his safety! So he quickly turned his footsteps towards his friend, and reaching him, found indeed that he looked ill, but the paleness vanished in a flush of joy, and they stood long together with hands firmly clasped.

Henry and Richard and his sister, had been play-fellows when children, and now when they were grown up the intimacy was as great, so that Radcliffe and Joanna Merton were like brother and sister, and often looked back to their childhood with peculiar pleasure.

“You remember Mary Stanfield, who used to be our constant companion;” said Joanna, “she is come to stay with me, and now we shall all four be together again, only more like one family than before, because we shall not be separated so often.”

“But,” said Roger Mackenzie, “will you not reckon me among your old friends, Jonnie? I have known you nearly as long.”

Jonnie said, “No, they were complete without him,” and rose hastily to meet Miss Stanfield, who was entering the room. She was a young girl of eighteen, looking even younger, and she greeted Henry as though very glad to see him again. In a short time they all felt as if they had never lost sight of one another. Joanna told Henry that Mary had spent six months with her, soon after his going abroad, and that she had returned home with her for two or three more. “But,” she said, “I find I can scarcely live without her, so I have persuaded her to come back to me. I cannot get on with my music, or anything alone; and as for the mornings with Richard, they are desolation itself.”

“Yes, indeed,” said her brother, “we missed you very much, Mary; Jonnie is so wild without you.”

“What do you read with them then?” asked Radcliffe.

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” answered Joanna, “nothing but dull history, and a variety of things about which I understand nothing; and then endless music, drawing, and poetry. Now I hate poetry, so I always leave them at that part of the morning; and when I am alone you see there is no one to fill my place, so I have to stay; therefore that is another reason for me to be glad Mary is here.”

Roger smiled as he thought of Richard and Mary on the bright summer mornings; and Henry, meeting his glance, derived therefrom an idea which rendered him doubly grave for the rest of the evening. He thought he saw in his friend’s gaze an additional shade of earnestness as it fell upon Mary, and he noticed her sweet eyes cloud with sorrow as they lighted upon Richard’s pale face.

It was a hot July morning, and Mary and Joanna were alone in a large room, looking towards the south. Joanna, seated in the clear sunlight, looked bright and beautiful as the day, but Mary’s face was grave even to sadness as she stood in the shade of the heavy purple curtains. Turning over some music, she spoke—“It is time for your brother to come and hear us play these duets; I wonder he is not here.”

“Oh, never mind, I hope he wont come. Do you know, Mary, it seems as if he was your brother too. Doesn’t it?” she added, raising her eyes from the book she was reading to Mary’s face.

“I do not think so, he is too far above me for that; almost more like a very kind master,” said she musingly.

“Well, I must leave you to receive him then; I have sinned already in spending so much of this glorious day in the house.” And throwing down her book, she sprang through the large open window, and fled along the terrace, with her long fair curls glowing in a blaze of splendour.

Mary sat down to the piano, and began dreamily striking a few rich chords with her right hand, while the other hung listlessly by her side, like a lily drooping in the heat. Presently Merton knocked at the door—an act specially demanded of him by Joanna—and Mary arose to greet him. He looked ill, but this was now only too usual; his face also was very grave, but she was so accustomed to that, she said nothing.

After they had talked for a while about the beauty of the morning, Mary said, “Shall I sing for you, as Joanna is away, and we cannot have the duets?”

“Yes, do,” he said; and sitting down, she seemed to sing in that rich voice of hers an accompaniment to the Midsummer morning; those low sweet notes were the sunshine and the shadow in music. He said nothing, but with a quiet, grave smile, arose; she also left her music, and turning to him, spoke.

“I have heard from home this morning, and must leave you next week.”

“I am very sorry,” said Richard, cutting a pencil for her.

“So am I, but mamma wants me now, and remember, I have been with you two months.”

“Two months! No, Mary, not so long as that!”

“Yes, indeed; have they not gone quickly?”

“Very.”

And an additional shade of gravity stole over Richard’s face; he was a great contrast to his little pupil as she stood beside him. He was sitting with his head bent down, apparently examining her pencils, so low that his face was hardly visible. From the white lids and pale complexion, however, it was easy to imagine the blue eyes fixed so determinedly on his fingers; but the crown of rich brown curling hair gave the colouring wanted for the beautiful picture. She was standing by him, looking over his shoulder, and, though her complexion was darker, she looked much brighter than he: her hair was a deep brown, looking almost black in shadow, but with a golden bloom on it, when, as now, the sunlight glanced over her head.

Merton started up.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I had forgotten you were standing; pray take this seat.”

“No, thank you, I will go to Jonnie now,” and she slowly stept out on the broad terrace, with her dark eyes drooped in the intense light, and the rich colour in her face so transparent in the sun, that the life-blood seemed fairly beating in her smooth cheeks no less than in the heart which throbbed so wildly under the small hand.

But Richard followed her only with his eyes, and, when her slight figure passed from his sight, he slowly rose and left the room, as the sun was hidden by a thick cloud. Leaving word that he had gone to see Radcliffe, and should not be home till evening, he passed out into the hot road. A short time, and he was with his friend, who had already been long at his easel; so, not to disturb him, he asked to look at a number of drawings lying on a small table.

“Certainly,” said Radcliffe, “they are only sketches of scenes and people I saw abroad, and so perhaps more interesting to me than you.” But it was not so; for an hour passed in silence, Henry absorbed in painting, and Richard looking at the little pictures, or rather at one. He had cast aside a number of sketches, now of a tree, now of a tower, a beautiful statue, or a shattered column; and when Henry turned to speak, he was seated with his head wearily leaning on his hand, and his eyes dreaming over a small water-colour of an Italian girl. It struck Henry now for the first time, why that face had seemed familiar to him, it bore a strong resemblance to Mary Stanfield; therefore, appearing not to have seen his friend, he said carelessly,

“I wish you would rid me of a few of those; indeed, if you will take all the heads I shall be glad, for they are not nearly so powerful in recalling scenes as the landscapes, for which I know you care little.”

Then there was silence again.

In the evening the friends sat together in Henry’s studio, by the light of the fire, talking of things which had happened during Radcliffe’s absence. After a while Merton said,

“You, my dear fellow, are then really an artist, you have actually begun your career.”

“Yes,” said Henry with gravity, “but with little ambition; at present I do not even dream of success.”

“But why not?” broke from Richard almost impetuously; then, sadly—“You have your life before you, and strength to devote to the task; it is not as if, like me, you carried about with you the constant idea of death: for, Henry, I can no longer keep it to myself, I feel, I know, I shall never live to



see the fulfilment of any one of my hopes. Do you not remember how my brother William died this time two years of consumption? and you cannot have forgotten how it was said that the same undeveloped disease was the reason of my marvellous likeness to him as he lay without life. I talk to you thus calmly about it, because for myself I have fought the fight and won the victory; I have given up my brightest hope for this life, but I cannot help looking forward for you.”

Henry was silent, he could not use common-place expressions of affection, and sympathy would have been utterly out of place; it was not wanted. But he felt then, from the suffering he had gone through, that some dream of his friend’s had been alike ruthlessly broken. Not in the same way perhaps, but notwithstanding the different means the end was the same; neither of them would ever live to call the woman whom he had loved best in the world his wife.

So when he did speak it was in a low voice; and, falling in with the humour of his friend, he would not speak sadly of the great change which was before him, but only hopefully of the happiness beyond, if he should at last reach that heaven for which it had been the object of his life to be prepared.

And the friends became doubly endeared to each other, because they felt such times as the present would rarely come again. After a while they talked of other things, and that subject was not again alluded to, except at parting, in the lengthened pressure of hands, which felt as though they could never separate.

But after Merton’s departure, Henry sat again by the fire; and the remembrance of their early friendship was very vivid in his mind: then he thought of the time when that friendship had grown into love, almost insensibly, but very surely. It had been during a tour among the Lakes which they had taken together; and he thought with pain now, how they had talked of the long future, looked for so naturally. And then he wondered what the unknown years would bring to him. Sorrow surely; joy perhaps. Victory? but he could not answer that question yet. Months passed on; Mary Stanfield went home, but Jonnie stayed with her brother, who to all eyes was rapidly wasting away. Radcliffe’s life was a very quiet one; he had not yet attained to such celebrity that his name should be on the lips of any but his friends; but to them he was very dear. The struggle that had taken place was over, and he saw on looking back, the slough from which he had escaped. He knew that a while ago his heart was bitter against the whole world, and that for the sake of one he would have denied any good to all: because one woman had shown him only evil, he would have drawn therefrom a cruel inference. And he shuddered to think of all to which it would have led; dark misanthropy and scepticism. And besides greater things, it would have shut against him the doors of Art; for his sullied soul could never have comprehended the great field of purity and delight wherein he now walked, a monarch. So he rejoiced, and went on his way rejoicing and strengthened.

What time he could, he spent with Merton, and that did him great good; for from his friend fell unconsciously, day by day, lessons which strengthened him to bear with all endurance the burden he carried.

Both bore a heavy sorrow; both felt it, but neither spoke to his brother for fear of adding a straw’s weight more to the burden he saw to be almost too much already.

But at last one night, when Merton had been ill a long time, and Henry was sitting by his bedside talking to him, there came a sudden pause.

Each knew what it meant; delicacy for the other had placed a barrier between



them on one subject only, but even that must be removed before the perfect communion of their souls should begin, never to end.

It was evening; the sun had set as their great hopes had done before, and the two were silent.

Merton lay back on his pillow, his pale face looking unutterably lovely, because of the slightness of the veil which hid his pure soul: and as Radcliffe looked at him, he felt the void in his heart fill almost to breaking with love and sorrow for his first friend.

So he spoke, feeling it was expected of him, and without any preface, told his friend of all the dreams once his, and the rough awakening. Even after this lapse of time, he could not say anything against her; and if he could, he durst not in the presence of one whom he thought so far above all human passions. So he did not notice, while he went on telling of the war and the victory, the calm face growing troubled, as it lay looking upwards, nor that the bright head turned round from him and hid itself; he was too much absorbed in his own sufferings, which seemed to him told for the first time, and by some one else, yet meeting with a wondrous sympathy from him; for, as he had never let the secret pass his lips before, they formed themselves with difficulty to the words. By degrees he came to the point where he had awakened, to know that he was on the brink of a precipice; but he spoke diffidently of the Kind Hand which had shown him the evil, and the Great Cure, for he felt that his friend must know all this so much better than himself. Then he went on, till he told of the daybreak, and how he had walked in light ever since; with sometimes a cloud of human sin or sorrow obscuring it, but always passing away. Then he suddenly stopped: “Oh Richard, Richard!” for the thin figure on the bed was shaken by a tempest of sobs, which still continued, while Radcliffe said again,

“Oh Richard, Richard, don’t!”

And throwing himself on his knees by the bedside, with one hand he took away the two thin ones so tightly clasped together against the face, while with the other he drew the bowed head to his breast, and hid it there, for he would not look on it.

After a while the sobs ceased, but still he would not speak, only gently caressed the hands that were powerless now. He was startled to hear Merton break the silence first, in a voice free from any trace of the emotion so lately there. Henry was awed as he listened to a story utterly unexpected. While he listened he rose, and slowly, from the impulse of love within him, drew his friend quite into his arms, and still without looking at his face, held him closely, as though they should never part. For Richard was telling of a love in comparison with which his own was nought; it was so wholly self-sacrificing. It seemed Merton had loved Mary well ever since his brother’s death, when she had been the one to soothe him and point out a hope which might sustain him for his life. At first he had indulged in all the dreams love gave; nay, he was sure now they had been well founded, for he knew she had loved him. Then came the knowledge that the Destroyer had marked him for his own; the certainty that Death was undermining with unerring hand the foundation of his yet young life. And he had framed a resolution worthy of a martyr. She should never know. He would not allow himself the unutterable blessing of her love for the short time of his life, because of the grief that would be hers when he was gone. So he had resolutely drawn back even the little way already advanced, and had quietly endured the pain of seeing her also withdraw with (he knew it) a feeling of shame for having ventured so far. Ah! that was the worst; that she should reproach herself for unwomanly conduct, when none ever had surer



ground whereon to build. Then faintly smiling, he said,

“But it may not seem much sacrifice to you, for I have been a thousandfold rewarded, even here on earth, by a love far beyond that of father, mother, brethren, or wife, and by that great sorrow have been taught a thing I shall never forget, and the joy of which shall endure for eternity.”

And thus they talked,

• “Until the night,
• Descending, fill’d the little room,
• Their faces faded from the sight,
• Their voices only broke the gloom.”

And when they ceased, it was as though an Angel spoke to them.

Soon after this Richard died. He left word with Jonnie to give Mary his Bible, in which he first wrote with a firm hand, “For my dear little Pupil,” for so he had taught her to consider herself, knowing then everything else would soon vanish.

But he made Henry promise never to lose sight of her, and told her himself one day (for she was with them again at his wish), half playfully, half in earnest, but withal fully meaning it, that he delegated his office to Henry, and she must think of him in future as she now thought of her present instructor.

She told him with tears she never could.

Jonnie seemed by the trouble brought upon her to improve wonderfully, (though Mary was ever in advance) and her true nature was so called forth that it would never hide again beneath the veil of nonsense and waywardness wherewith she used to delight to tease her friends.

Roger Mackenzie felt this, and one day, a year after her brother’s death, told her that he had loved her from the first; so she gave him her hand, for her heart was his already.

Meanwhile Radcliffe, after his second loss greatly troubled, still followed the profession he had struggled for through every difficulty. His name was abroad in the world, but his early sorrows had calmed the nature that would otherwise have delighted in fame. Mary was proud of her friendship with him, “he was so good,” she said. She often thought that, in dying, Merton had let the mantle of his gentle spirit fall on Henry, and therefore loved him the more.

Their friendship began even before Richard’s death, and he had been made happy by knowing it would continue.

In course of time, Mary married one who would have been worthy of her, even in his eyes; and her simple and sweet character became ful