Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.

[From Dickens's "Household Words."]

EBENEZER ELLIOTT

The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and most important political changes of modern times, with events not yet sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes true poetry, had the corn laws never existed.

He was born on 25th March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough, in the parish of Rotherham, where his father was a clerk in the employment of Messrs. Walker, with a salary of £60 or £70 per annum. His father was a man of strong political tendencies, possessed of humorous and satiric power, that might have qualified him for a comic actor. Such was the character he bore for political sagacity that he was popularly known as "Devil Elliott." The mother of the poet seems to have been a woman of an extreme nervous temperament, constantly suffering from ill health, and constitutionally awkward and diffident.

Ebenezer commenced his early training at a dame's school; but shy, awkward, and desultory, he made little progress; nor did he thrive much better at the school in which he was afterward placed. Here he employed his comrades to do his tasks for him, and of course laid no foundation for his future education. His parents, disheartened by the lad's apparent stolidity, sent him next to Dalton's school, two miles distant; and here he certainly acquired something, for he retained, to old age, the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness, wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him to work in the foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on better terms with himself than he had been for a considerable period, for he discovered that he could compete with others in work – sheer hand-labor – if he could not in the school. One disadvantage, however, arose, as he tells us, from his foundry life; for he acquired a relish for vulgar pursuits, and the village alehouse divided his attentions with the woods and fields. Still a deep impression of the charms of nature had been made upon him by his boyish rambles, which the debasing influences and associations into which he was thrown could not wholly wipe out. He would still wander away in his accustomed haunts, and purify his soul from her alehouse defilements, by copious draughts of the fresh nectar of natural beauty imbibed from the sylvan scenery around him.

The childhood and youth of the future poet presented a strange medley of opposites and antitheses. Without the ordinary measure of adaptation for scholastic pursuits, he inhaled the vivid influences of external things, delighting intensely in natural objects, and yet feeling an infinite chagrin and remorse at his own idleness and ignorance. We find him highly imaginative; making miniature lakes by sinking an iron vessel filled with water in a heap of stones, and gazing therein with wondrous enjoyment at the reflection of the sun and skies overhead; and exhibiting a strange passion for looking on the faces of those who had died violent deaths, although these dead men's features would haunt his imagination for weeks afterward.

He did not, indeed, at this period, possess the elements of an ordinary education. A very simple circumstance sufficed to apply the spark which fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about £30 a year, by whom he was shown a number of "Sowerby's English Botany," which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates made a considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he assayed to copy them by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before them. When he found he could trace their forms by these means his delight was unbounded, and every spare hour was devoted to the agreeable task. Here commenced that intimate acquaintance with flowers, which seems to pervade all his works. This aunt of Ebenezer's, (good soul! would that every shy, gawky Ebenezer had such an aunt!) bent on completing the charm she had so happily begun, displayed to him still further her son's book of dried specimens; and this elated him beyond measure. He forthwith commenced a similar collection for himself, for which purpose he would roam the fields still more than ever, on Sundays as well as week days, to the interruption of his attendances at chapel. This book he called his "Dry Flora," (Hortus Siccus) and none so proud as he when neighbors noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hand, and made by himself from nature. "Thomson's Seasons," read to him about this time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who wrote "The Village Patriarch," and the "Corn Law Rhymes."

From this time he set himself resolutely to the work of self-education. His knowledge of the English language was meagre in the extreme; and he succeeded at last only by making for himself a kind of grammar by reading and observation. He then tried French, but his native indolence prevailed, and he gave it up in despair. He read with avidity whatever books came in his way; and a small legacy of books to his father came in just at the right time. He says he could never read through a second-rate book, and he therefore read masterpieces only; "after Milton, then Shakspeare; then Ossian; then Junius; Paine's 'Common Sense;' Swift's 'Tale of a Tub;' 'Joan of Arc;' Schiller's 'Robbers;' Burger's 'Lenora;' Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall;' and long afterward, Tasso, Dante, De Staël, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the 'Westminster Review.'" Reading of this character might have been expected to lead to something; and was well calculated to make an extraordinary impression on such a mind as Elliott's; and we have the fruit of this course of study in the poetry which from this time he began to throw off.

He remained with his father from his sixteenth to his twenty-third year, working laboriously without wages, except an occasional shilling or two for pocket-money. He afterward tried business on his own account. He made two efforts at Sheffield; the last commencing at the age of forty, and with a borrowed capital of £150. He describes in his nervous language the trials and difficulties he had to contend with; and all these his imagination embodied for him in one grim and terrible form, which he christened "Bread Tax." With this demon he grappled in desperate energy, and assailed it vigorously with his caustic rhyme This training, these mortifications, these misfortunes, and the demon "Bread Tax" above all, made Elliott successively despised, hated, feared, and admired, as public opinion changed toward him.

Mr. Howitt describes his warehouse as a dingy, and not very extensive place, heaped with iron of all sorts, sizes, and forms, with barely a passage through the chaos of rusty bars into the inner sanctum, at once, study, counting-house, library, and general receptacle of odds and ends connected with his calling. Here and there, to complete the jumble, were plaster casts of Shakspeare, Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon, suggestive of the presidency of literature over the materialism of commerce which marked the career of this singular being. By dint of great industry he began to flourish in business, and, at one time, could make a profit of £20 a-day without moving from his seat. During this prosperous period he built a handsome villa-residence in the suburbs. He now had leisure to brood over the full force and effect of the Corn Laws. The subject was earnestly discussed then in all manufacturing circles of that district. Reverses now arrived. In 1837, he lost fully one-third of all his savings, getting out of the storm at last with about £6,000, which he wrote to Mr. Tait of Edinburgh, he intended, if possible, to retain. The palmy days of £20 profits had gone by for Sheffield, and instead, all was commercial disaster and distrust. Elliott did well to retire with what little he had remaining. In his retreat he was still vividly haunted by the demon "Bread Tax." This, then, was the period of the Corn-Law Rhymes, and these bitter experiences lent to them that tone of sincerity and earnestness – that fire and frenzy which they breathed, and which sent them, hot, burning words of denunciation and wrath, into the bosoms of the working classes – the toiling millions from whom Elliott sprang. "Bread Tax," indeed, to him was a thing of terrible import and bitter experience: hence he uses no gentle terms or honeyed phrases when dealing with the obnoxious impost. Sometimes coarse invective and angry assertion take the place of convincing reason and calm philosophy. At others, there is a true vein of poetry and pathos running through the rather unpoetic theme, which touches us with its Wordsworthian feeling and gentleness. Then he would be found calling down thunders upon the devoted heads of the monopolists, with all a fanatic's hearty zeal, and in his fury he would even pursue them, not merely through the world, but beyond its dim frontiers and across the threshold of another state. Take them, however, as they stand – and more vigorous, effective, and startling political poetry has not graced the literature of the age.

It was not to be supposed but that this trumpet-blast of defiance, and shrill scream of "war to the knife," should bring down upon him much obloquy, much vituperation: but all this fell harmlessly upon him; he rather liked it. When people began to bear with the turbid humor and angry utterances of the "Corn Law Rhymer," and grew familiar with the stormy march of his verse, it was discovered that he was something more than a mere political party song-writer. He was a true poet, whose credentials, signed and sealed in the court of nature, attested the genuineness of his brotherhood with those children of song who make the world holier and happier by the mellifluous strains they bring to us, like fragments of a forgotten melody, from the far-off world of beauty and of love.

Elliott will not soon cease to be distinctively known as the "Corn Law Rhymer;" but it will be by his non-political poems that he will be chiefly remembered by posterity as the Poet of the People; for his name will still be, as it has long been, a "Household Word," in the homes of all such as love the pure influences of simple, sensuous, and natural poetry. As an author he did not make his way fast: he had written poetry for twenty years ere he had attracted much notice. A genial critique by Southey in the "Quarterly," another by Carlyle in the "Edinburgh," and favorable notices in the "Athenæum" and "New Monthly," brought him into notice; and he gradually made his way until a new and cheap edition of his works, in 1840, stamped him as a popular poet. His poetry is just such as, knowing his history, we might have expected; and such as, not knowing it, might have bodied forth to us the identical man as we find him.

As we have said, Nature was his school; but flowers were the especial vocation of his muse. A small ironmonger – a keen and successful tradesman – we should scarcely have given him credit for such an exquisite love of the beautiful in Nature, as we find in some of those lines written by him in the crowded counting-room of that dingy warehouse. The incident of the floral miscellany; the subsequent study of "The Seasons;" the long rambles in meadows and on hill-sides, specimen-hunting for his Hortus Siccus, sufficiently account for the exquisite sketches of scenery, and those vivid descriptions of natural phenomena, which showed that the coinage of his brain had been stamped in Nature's mint. The most casual reader would at once discover that, with Thomson, he has ever been the devoted lover and worshiper of Nature – at wanderer by babbling streams – a dreamer in the leafy wilderness – a worshiper of morning upon the golden hill-tops. He gives us pictures of rural scenery warm as the pencil of a Claude, and glowing as the sunsets of Italy.

A few sentences will complete our sketch, and bring us to the close of the poet's pilgrimage. He had come out of the general collapse of commercial affairs in 1837, with a small portion of the wealth he had realized by diligent and continuous labor. He took a walk, on one occasion, into the country, of about eighteen miles: reached Argilt Hill, liked the place, returned, and resolved to buy it. He laid out in house and land about one thousand guineas. His family consisted of Mrs. Elliott and two daughters; a servant-maid; an occasional helper; a Welch pony and small gig; "a dog almost as big as the mare, and much wiser than his master; a pony-cart; a wheel-barrow; and a grindstone – and," says he, "turn up your nose if you like!"

From his own papers we learn that he had one son a clergyman, at Lothedale, near Skipton; another in the steel trade, on Elliott's old premises at Sheffield; two others unmarried, living on their means; another "druggisting at Sheffield, in a sort of chimney called a shop;" and another, a clergyman, living in the West Indies. Of his thirteen children, five were dead, and of whom he says. "They left behind them no memorial – but they are safe in the bosom of Mercy, and not quite forgotten even here!"

In this retirement he occasionally lectured and spoke at public meetings; but he began to suffer from a spasmodic affection of the nerves, which obliged him wholly to forego public speaking. This disease grew worse; and in December, 1839, he was warned that he could not continue to speak in public, except at the risk of sudden death. This disorder lingered about him for about six years; he then fell ill of a more serious disease, which threatened speedy termination. This was in May, 1849. In September, he writes, "I have been very, very ill." On the first of December, 1849, the event, which had so long been impending, occurred, and Elliott peacefully departed in the sixty-ninth year of his age.

Thus, then, the sun set on one whose life was one continued heroic struggle with opposing influences – with ignorance first, then trade, then the corn laws, then literary fame, and, last of all, disease: and thus the world saw its last of the material breathing form of the rugged but kindly being who made himself loved, feared, hated, and famous, as the "Corn Law Rhymer."

[From Cumming's Hunting Adventures in South Africa.]

CONFLICT WITH AN ELEPHANT

In a few minutes one of those who had gone off to our left came running breathless to say that he had seen the mighty game. I, halted for a minute, and instructed Isaac, who carried the big Dutch rifle, to act independently of me, while Kleinboy was to assist me in the chase; but, as usual, when the row began, my followers thought only of number one. I bared my arms to the shoulder, and, having imbibed a draught of aqua pura from the calabash of one of the spoorers, I grasped my trusty two-grooved rifle, and told my guide to go ahead. We proceeded silently as might be for a few hundred yards, following the guide, when he suddenly pointed, exclaiming, "Klow!" and before us stood a herd of mighty bull elephants, packed together beneath a shady grove about a hundred and fifty yards in advance. I rode slowly toward them, and, as soon as they observed me, they made a loud rumbling noise, and, tossing their trunks, wheeled right about and made off in one direction, crashing through the forest and leaving a cloud of dust behind them. I was accompanied by a detachment of my dogs, who assisted me in the pursuit.

The distance I had come, and the difficulties I had undergone to behold these elephants, rose fresh before me. I determined that on this occasion at least I would do my duty, and, dashing my spurs into "Sunday's" ribs, I was very soon much too close in their rear for safety. The elephants now made an inclination to my left, whereby I obtained a good view of the ivory. The herd consisted of six bulls; four of them were full grown, first-rate elephants; the other two were fine fellows, but had not yet arrived at perfect stature. Of the four old fellows, two had much finer tusks than the rest, and for a few seconds I was undecided which of these two I would follow; when, suddenly, the one which I fancied had the stoutest tusks broke from his comrades, and I at once felt convinced that he was the patriarch of the herd, and followed him accordingly. Cantering alongside, I was about to fire, when he instantly turned, and, uttering a trumpet so strong and shrill that the earth seemed to vibrate beneath my feet, he charged furiously after me for several hundred yards in a direct line, not altering his course in the slightest degree for the trees of the forest, which he snapped and overthrew like reeds in his headlong career.

When he pulled up in his charge, I likewise halted; and as he slowly turned to retreat, I let fly at his shoulder, "Sunday" capering and prancing, and giving me much trouble. On receiving the ball the elephant shrugged his shoulder, and made off at a free, majestic walk. This shot brought several of the dogs to my assistance which had been following the other elephants, and on their coming up and barking another headlong charge was the result, accompanied by the never-failing trumpet as before In his charge he passed close to me, when I saluted him with a second bullet in the shoulder of which he did not take the slightest notice. I now determined not to fire again until I could make a steady shot; but, although the elephant turned repeatedly, "Sunday" invariably disappointed me, capering so that it was impossible to fire. At length, exasperated, I became reckless of the danger, and, springing from the saddle, approached the elephant under cover of a tree and gave him a bullet in the side of the head, when, trumpeting so shrilly that the forest trembled, he charged among the dogs, from whom he seemed to fancy that the blow had come; after which he took up a position in a grove of thorns, with his head toward me. I walked up very near, and, as he was in the act of charging (being in those days under wrong impressions as to the impracticability of bringing down an elephant with a shot in the forehead), stood coolly in his path until he was within fifteen paces of me, and let drive at the hollow of his forehead, in the vain expectation that by so doing I should end his career. The shot only served to increase his fury – an effect which, I had remarked, shots in the head invariably produced; and, continuing his charge with incredible quickness and impetuosity, he all but terminated my elephant-hunting forever. A large party of the Bechuanas who had come up, yelled out simultaneously, imagining I was killed, for the elephant was at one moment almost on the top of me: I, however, escaped by my activity, and by dodging round the bushy trees. As the elephant was charging, an enormous thorn ran deep into the sole of my foot the old Badenoch brogues, which I that day sported, being worn through, and this caused me severe pain, laming me throughout the rest of the conflict.

The elephant held on through the forest at a sweeping pace; but he was hardly out of sight when I was loaded and in the saddle, and soon once more alongside. About this time I heard Isaac blazing away at another bull; but when the elephant charged, his cowardly heart failed him, and he very soon made his appearance at a safe distance in my rear. My elephant kept crashing along at a steady pace, with blood streaming from his wounds; the dogs, which were knocked up with fatigue and thirst, no longer barked around him, but had dropped astern. It was long before I again fired, for I was afraid to dismount, and "Sunday" was extremely troublesome. At length I fired sharp right and left from the saddle: he got both balls behind the shoulder, and made a long charge after me, rumbling and trumpeting as before. The whole body of the Bamangwato men had now come up, and were following a short distance behind me. Among these was Mollyeon, who volunteered to help; and being a very swift and active fellow, he rendered me important service by holding my fidgety horse's head while I fired and loaded. I then fired six broadsides from the saddle, the elephant charging almost every time, and pursuing us back to the main body in our rear, who fled in all directions as he approached.

The sun had now sunk behind the tops of the trees; it would very soon be dark, and the elephant did not seem much distressed, notwithstanding all he had received. I recollected that my time was short, and therefore at once resolved to fire no more from the saddle, but to go close up to him and fire on foot. Riding up to him. I dismounted, and, approaching very near, I gave it him right and left in the side of the head, upon which he made a long and determined charge after me; but I was now very reckless of his charges, for I saw that he could not overtake me, and in a twinkling I was loaded, and, again approaching, fired sharp right and left behind his shoulder. Again he charged with a terrific trumpet, which sent "Sunday" flying through the forest. This was his last charge. The wounds which he had received began to tell on his constitution, and he now stood at bay beside a thorny tree, with the dogs barking around him. These, refreshed by the evening breeze, and perceiving that it was nearly over with the elephant, had once more come to my assistance. Having loaded, I drew near and fired right and left at his forehead. On receiving these shots, instead of charging, he tossed his trunk up and down, and by various sounds and motions, most gratifying to the hungry natives, evinced that his demise was near. Again I loaded, and fired my last shot behind his shoulder: on receiving it, he turned round the bushy tree beside which he stood, and I ran round to give him the other barrel, but the mighty old monarch of the forest needed no more; before I could clear the bushy tree he fell heavily on his side, and his spirit had fled. My feelings at this moment can only be understood by a few brother Nimrods who have had the good fortune to enjoy a similar encounter. I never felt so gratified on any former occasion as I did then.

By this time all the natives had come up; they were in the highest spirits, and flocked around the elephant, laughing and talking at a rapid pace. I climbed on to him, and sat enthroned upon his side, which was as high as my eyes when standing on the ground. In a few minutes night set in, when the natives, having illuminated the jungle with a score of fires, and formed a semicircle of bushes to windward, lay down to rest without partaking of a morsel of food. Mutchuisho would not allow a man to put an assagai into the elephant until the morrow, and placed two relays of sentries to keep watch on either side of him. My dinner consisted of a piece of flesh from the temple of the elephant, which I broiled on the hot embers. In the conflict I had lost my shirt, which was reduced to streamers by the wait-a-bit thorns, and all the clothing that remained was a pair of buckskin knee-breeches.

[From The Ladies' Companion.]

LETTICE ARNOLD

By the Author of "Two Old Men's Tales," "Emilia Wyndham," &c

[Concluded from page 178.]

CHAPTER VII

Bless the Lord, oh my soul! and all that is within me bless his holy name;
Who forgiveth all thy iniquities and healeth all thy diseases,
Who saveth thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies.

MRS. FISHER

I must now introduce you to Mrs. Fisher. She is so great a favorite of mine, that before I relate what became of Myra, I must make you acquainted with this lady.

Mrs. Fisher was a respectable gentlewoman like personage of about fifty-four, of a grave, authoritative and somewhat severe aspect; but with the remains of very extraordinary personal beauty which she had once possessed in an eminent degree. She was somewhat above the middle size, of an erect, firm, full figure, her hair now gently turning gray, drawn over her finely proportioned forehead; her eyes large, and of a fine color and form – clear and steady; her mouth expressive of sense and temper; and her dress in character with the rest. Mrs. Fisher was always handsomely dressed in silks of the best description, but in slight mourning, which she always wore; and on her head, also, a cap rather plainer than the mode, but of the finest and most expensive materials: nothing could be more dignified and complete than her appearance.

When first Myra was introduced to her she was both daunted and disappointed; the gravity, amounting almost to sternness, with which Mrs. Fisher received her, and explained to her the duties she was expected to perform, awed in the first place, and mortified in the second. The establishment of this fashionable modiste, with which Myra had associated nothing but laces and ribbons, dresses and trimmings, embroidery and feathers, flattery and display, struck cold and dull upon her imagination. She was introduced into a handsomely but very plainly furnished sitting-room, where not one trace of any of those pretty things were to be seen, and heard of nothing but regularity of hours, persevering industry, quaker neatness, attention to health, and the strictest observance of the rules of what she thought quite a prudish propriety.

Mrs. Fisher's life had been one of vicissitude, and in its vicissitudes, she, a strong, earnest-minded woman, had learned much. She had known sorrow, privation, cruelly hard labor, and the loneliness of utter desolation of the heart She had, moreover, been extremely beautiful, and she had experienced those innumerable perils to which such a gift exposes an unprotected girl, struggling for her bread, under the cruelest circumstances of oppressive labor. Every description of hardship, and every description of temptation belonging to perhaps the hardest and almost the most dangerous position of female life, Mrs. Fisher had gone through.

She had outlived its sufferings and escaped its snares.

The suffering, thanks to one of the finest constitutions in the world; the snares, thanks to what she always, with inexhaustible gratitude, acknowledged as the special mercy and providence of God.

An orphan at the dangerous age of seventeen, the lovely blooming young creature was placed by her friends in one of the most fashionable and largest milliners' establishments at that time in London, and had found herself at once miserable and excited, oppressed and flattered.

The mistress of this flourishing house, intent upon making a rapid fortune before the years in which she could enjoy it should come to a close, cared little – I might say nothing – for the welfare of the poor creatures whose labors were to construct that edifice. She, in fact, never thought about them. Want of thought may be pleaded as the excuse, wretched one as it is, for the cruelties of those days. People certainly had not the claim of common humanity sounded into their ears as it is into all ears now. A few admirable philanthropists talked of it, and preached it; but it was not to be heard calling in the streets, as it is the triumph of our day to acknowledge, till the hardest heart for very shame is forced to pay some attention to the call.

It never entered into Miss Lavington's head that she had any other business with her young women, but to get all the work she possibly could out of their hands, and as well done, and as speedily done as possible. If she objected to night-work in addition to day-work, it was not in the slightest degree out of compassion for the aching limbs and wearied eyes of the poor girls; but because wax candles were expensive, and tallow ones were apt to drip; and there was always double the duty required from the superintendent (her special favorite), to keep the young women at those times to their duty, and prevent fine materials from being injured.

Oh! those dreadful days and nights of the season, which the poor Lucy Miles at that place went through.

She – accustomed to the sweet fresh air of the country, to the cheerful variety of daily labor in her father's large farm, and under the care of a brisk, clever, but most kind and sensible mother – to be shut up twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nay twenty hours before a birth-night, in the sickening atmosphere of the close work-room. The windows were rarely opened, if ever; for the poor young things were so unnaturally chilly for want of exercise and due circulation of the blood, that they said they should, and perhaps they might, have taken cold if fresh air were admitted. There was nothing they all dreaded so much as taking cold; those fatal coughs, which every season thinned the ranks, to be filled with fresh victims, were invariably attributed to some particular occasion when they had "taken cold." They did not know that they were rejecting the very cordial of life and inhaling poison when they kept the room so close.

Oh! for the dreadful weariness which proceeds from in-action of the limbs! so different from the wholesome fatigue of action, In-action where the blood is stagnating in every vein: in-action, after which rest is not rest, but a painful effort of the repressed currents to recover their circulating power – so different from the delightful sensation of wholesome rest after physical exertion.

At first she felt it almost insupportable. I have heard her say that it seemed at times as if she would have given years of her existence to be allowed to get up and walk up and down the room for a few minutes. The sensation was so insupportable. That craving desire of the body for what it is in want of – be it water, be it bread, be it rest, be it change of posture – is so dreadful in its urgency. The most abominable tortures men have in their wickedness invented are founded upon this fact – tortures that render the black history of inquisitors yet blacker: and here it was, in one at least of its numerous forms, daily inflicted upon a set of helpless young women, by a person who thought herself perfectly justifiable, and whose conscience never pricked her in the least.

Such is negligent moral habit.

Oh! the delight at meal-times – to spring up, I was going to say – I meant to get up – for there was no spring left in these poor stiffened frames. Oh! the delight when the eye of that superintendent was no longer watching the busy circle, and her voice calling to order any one who durst just to raise a head, and pause in the unintermitting toil. Oh! the delight to get up and come to breakfast, or dinner, or tea.

They had not much appetite when they came to their meals to be sure. There was only one thing they were always ready to enjoy, and that was their tea. That blessed and long abused tea; which has done more to sweeten private life with its gentle warmth and excitement, than any cordial that has ever been invented. It is but a cordial, however; it is not a nourishment; though a little sugar, and wretched blue milk, such as London milk used to be, may be added to it. Most of the young ladies, however, preferred it without these additions; they found it more stimulating so, I believe, poor things!

Such nourishment as they received, it is plain, would ill supply the rapid exhaustion of their employment. One by one in the course of the season they sickened and dropped off; some died out and out; some, alas! tempted by suffering and insupportable fatigue, or by that vanity and levity which seems to be too common a result with many girls living together, did worse. There would have been a heavy record against her every June, if Miss Lavington had taken the trouble to note down what had become of her missing young ladies.