at Brighton." The answer was that the real representatives of the people, there were "two." His lordship then and that therefore the laws were not desired that the plate won by his horse enacted by their own consent." Mr. might be equally divided for the ben-Perry seems to have escaped, since a efit of those laudable institutions. All reward of £100 was offered for his

this, be it remarked, was in the lifetime of some who (presumably) are alive

now.

apprehension.

The last item in "Principal Occurrences is the table of metropolitan mortality for the year, in which it appears that the "Burials" showed an excess over the "Christenings of 865, and that of the children who had died (the total deaths of all ages being 20,213), 8,703 were under five years of age, and that only 432 persons (male and female) reached the age of eighty in the twelve months. With regard to the proportion of infant deaths, since children were not counted till they had been christened, there would probably be many who died (born, but unreckoned) before baptism. This suggests an appalling picture of infant mortality in London (and, indeed, elsewhere), only a hundred years ago.

It was exactly a hundred years ago that Earl Stanhope's experiments for navigating vessels with "the steam engine" were recognized by the Navy Board, which undertook to pay the expense of one (two hundred tons burden) "on condition that if she do not answer, after a fair trial, she shall be returned to Earl Stanhope, and all the expense incurred made good by him." This, adds the narrator, "is undoubtedly a noble experiment, and highly honorable to his lordship, whatever may be its success. If it answer, the advantage to the public, particularly in inland navigation, will be immense." The next paragraph tells us that Lord Falmouth and others were laudably exerting themselves to prevent the plundering of wrecked vessels by the country people on the coast of Corn-"This house to let, etc.," on the door wall.

There is mention made of food riots in various parts, and straws in the wind showed that certain disaffected people were being inflamed by reason of what had been coming to pass in France. One man was taken into custody for having stuck upon the door of the Fleet Prison "This house to let. Peaceable possession will be given by the present tenants, etc., etc. Bastiles are no longer necessary in Europe." We are not here told what was done with this dangerous wag, but a company of the London militia was ordered to be on duty night and day, and a large meeting of bankers, traders, and others was held at Merchant Taylors' Hall," when a declaration expressive of their determination to support our present happy constitution was unanimously agreed to." But all do not appear to have been satisfied, since about the same time Mr. Perry, the printer of the Argus, was indicted for a libel, to wit, "that the House of Commons were not

On searching the "Principal Occurrences" of the following year for the fate of the man who stuck a handbill,

of the Fleet Prison, I find that "since he had conducted himself with a criminal effrontery that bespoke no compunction of heart," he was sentenced to be "imprisoned in Newgate for the term of three years, and during that time to stand once in the pillory at the Royal Exchange, and at the expiration of his imprisonment to find security for his good behavior for five years, himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each -a lesson to political billstickers.

As might be expected, one marked feature of this century-old "Register is the repeated list of men and women "left for execution.” Some of these, indeed, were respited, but the gibbet was the chief weapon of the law for punishing all sorts and conditions of offenders. Protests, however, were not wanting against this severity. The public conscience was beginning to be touched, though it can hardly be said to have been awakened till within the last thirty or forty years. Voices, too,

were being freshly raised against the slave trade by Mr. Wilberforce and others. Thus, special notice comes to be made of it in current publications, and the "New Annual Register" under the head of "British and Foreign History," gives condensed reports of the debates to which it gave rise in Parliament.

himself with respect to the truth," said, "thumb screws, and other instruments of torture, except the whip and the stocks" (a considerate exception) were utterly abolished, and he saw but little of that cruelty which was so much complained of. He confessed, however, that there was room for much amendment. Missionaries, he said, should be sent to instruct the slaves in religion; marriage ought to be encouraged, medical societies instituted. . . Premiums ought also to be given both to mothers and fathers of children.”

On the committee dividing, a motion (supported by both Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt) was carried by a majority of sixtyeight, for a "gradual abolition" of the traffic, and after two or three adjournments, it was proposed that it should cease at the expiration of "eight years.” To this an amendment was moved that it should terminate in a year, and after more debates a compromise was accepted by both parties that it should come to an end in "four." This was carried by a majority of forty.

It was not, indeed, for the first time that they were then held, a hundred years ago. "On Monday, the 2nd of April (1792), the House of Commons resolved itself into a committee to consider (again) of the circumstances of the African slave trade." It will be remarked that the subject of debate was not "Slavery." Mr. Wilberforce, who opened it, "disclaimed any design of an immediate emancipation of the negroes. They were far from being in a state for the reception of such an enjoyment. Liberty he considered as the child of reason." These are the reported words of the great philanthropist in beginning his speech. It was the nefarious traffic, the importation of any more negroes from Africa, The measure, however, met with less against which he then pleaded. In favor in the Upper House, several nosupport of his plea, "he observed the ble lords (including a bishop) urging number of slaves now in Jamaica only the expediency of hearing fresh eviwas three hundred thousand, while that dence. This was ordered to be heard of the whites was only twenty thou- at the bar, and thus, the registrar adds sand, and this alarming disparity they (this time showing a personal feeling wished preposterously to increase." in the matter), "the advocates for the Then he proceeded to expose "the abuses of the slave trade sheltered absurd supposition that the trade was a themselves under the masked battery nursery for seamen," quoting authentic of form," hoping "that the popular documents, pleading also that the abo- fervor might abate upon the subject, or lition of the traffic would not injure some fortunate war, or other circumcommerce, and pressing the considera-stance, might opportunely occur tion (which reads curiously to us now) defeat the hopes and frustrate the en"that when no more slaves were suf-deavors of the friends of mankind.” fered to be imported, they must be well It was not (as we know) till 1807 that treated; and by proper treatment they would multiply faster and be better servants."

to

a bill for the abolition of the slave trade passed both Houses successfully. In 1824 slave-trading was made a capThe greater part of his speech was, ital offence, mitigated in 1837 to transas might be supposed, devoted to an portation for life. Meanwhile, the exposition of the horrible cruelties" Anti-Slavery Society grew up, and seen in the kidnapping and transporta- a motion for the extinction of slavery tion of negroes. Then one member itself in the British dominions was after another defended the existing finally passed, and received the royal state of affairs; and Mr. Vaughan, assent on the 28th of August, 1833. who had visited Jamaica, "to certify As I take down the century-old vol

can

they were doing more than correcting an individually national injustice, or saw that their movement was a step in

the Old World from the New, and setting up a then undreamt-of test of the relationship between one man and another. The growth of this change is now, indeed, producing those phases of

ume of the "New Annual Register" from its shelf and turn over its pages recording the utterances of men who were watching the French Revolution, the change which was differentiating and still sore at the rejection of British rule by their former American fellowsubjects, this matter of "slave traffic" seems to separate itself from the other great questions of the day, and mark the progress of that human relation-democracy which have taken no final ship which radically distinguishes the shape, but are bewildering many, and East from the West, and may, indeed, utilize in their development, often unbe said to divide the Old World from consciously, the force of political bodies the New. We may call it the "broth- which are assumed to be antagonistic. erhood" of man. Its perception, as It is in the debates on the "slave Mr. Wilberforce said of liberty, is the trade" in Parliament, which rank child of reason; it grows slowly, and among discussions whose issues have come to its full fruit only after passed away, that I see the germs of long and patient use of the best facul- that great movement which is changing ties which we possess. Glimpses, an- the world of men, not in that which gry, distorted, imperfect, have been professes to be a chronicle of "Prinhad of it under circumstances of op- cipal Occurrences," and records only pression, leading to fierce revolutions the murders, shipwrecks, fires, execuor hasty legislation which upset the tions, robberies, marriages, battles, and balance of progress, but the perception births (natural or monstrous), which of it creeps onwards into light, mark- are common to the future and the past. ing more and more clearly the distinction between the old and new order of social life. There have been some things common to all conditions of society in the history of mankind. Whether nations have been civilized or savage, men have built and fought, they have married, and been given in marriage. But, once upon a time, there was no state of humanity in which some section did not claim the right of possession or supreme command over another, in the shape of slavery, serfdom, or some limited form of essential superiority which excluded the admission of real brotherhood. It is in the East that we may now see the greatest inability to realize it; but once this blindness was spread over the whole earth, and affected the West even after centuries of Christianity.

From The Gentleman's Magazine. WESSEX PHILOSOPHY.

To add a new province to literature is no mean achievement, and this Mr. Hardy has done. The easy course for the plain man who commences novelist is to make his tale a tale of one or two cities already known to geography. For greater freedom, he may lay his scene "at the town of in Blankshire;" but the streets of that town of happy endings are deep-worn with the feet of earlier generations of novelists. It is a fortunate inspiration which creates a "local habitation and a name ” out of the void. The architect of Thrums may well be proud of his achievement. The deviser of BarsetWhen, therefore, I turn over the shire, with its pleasant parsonages and leaves of the century-old volume before its cathedral city, the scene not of one me, I do not see among the "Principal but of several stories, stands - mainly Occurrences" of the year the an- by virtue of that county—almost in nouncement that one more step had step with the greatest novelists of the been taken in recognizing the brother- Victorian age. But to create Wessex hood of man. Even those who were was a yet greater task. For Mr. Hardy taking it perhaps hardly realized that has not merely given the world a new

province; he has peopled it with a ter to the old faith I was born in. race new to literature.

The agricultural laborer has played but the smallest part in fiction. But in Wessex all the population lives by the land. They have the right savor of the soil. It is a land of villages. Of most of these might be said what Mr. Hardy says of Little Hintock; they are "of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world, where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more listlessness than meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premisses, and results in inferences wildly imaginative." The villagers "belong to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion." Yet it is possible to glean some fragments of philosophy from the felicitous perversions and appropriate absurdities of their conversation.

The two centres of village life are the church and the inn; and round these crystallizes the villagers' philosophy. The combined effect of the two institutions is seen in the immortal Mr. Poorgrass.

666

Yes; there's this to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all. But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapelmembers be clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about their families, and shipwracks in the newspaper.'

"They can they can,' said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great person like the Lord than babes unborn.'

"Chapel-folk be more hand-inglove with them above than we,' said Joseph thoughtfully.

"Yes,' said Coggan. 'We know well that if anybody goes to heaven, they will. They've worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it, such as 'tis. I'm not such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to the Church have “Well, I hope Providence won't be the same chance as they, because we in a way with me for my doings,' said know we have not. But I hate a feller Joseph, again sitting down. 'I've who'll change his old ancient doctrines been troubled with weak moments for the sake of getting to heaven.' lately, 'tis true. I've been drinky once But the attachment of the peasants this month already, and I did not go to to their church does not blind them church a' Sunday, and I dropped a to the imperfections of their pastors. curse or two yesterday; so I don't want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered off-hand.'

"I believe ye to be a chapel-member, Joseph. That I do.'

Mrs. Dewey complains that the new vicar calis at unseasonable hours. Her husband, more tolerant, discusses his

sermons:

"His sermon was well enough, a very excellent sermon enough, only he "Oh, no, no! I don't go so far as couldn't put it into words and speak it. that.' That's all was the matter wi' the ser

"For my part,' said Coggan, 'I'm staunch Church of England.'

“Ay, and faith, so be I,' said Mark Clark.

mon. He hadn't been able to get it past his pen.'

666

"Well, ay, the sermon might be good enough, for, ye see, the sermon of Old Ecclesiastes himself lay in Old Ecclesiastes' ink-bottle afore he got it out." "

"I won't say much for myself; I don't wish to,' Coggan continued, with that tendency to talk on principles which is a characteristic of the barley- Mellstock village, the home of this But I've never changed a acute critic, was, in the matter of single doctrine; I've stuck like a plas- church attendance, a shining example

corn.

among the villages of Wessex; a vir- Wessex beverage. In the West cider tue which it owed chiefly to the attrac- held sway; but elsewhere the favorite tions of the old-fashioned string choir liquor was Casterbridge ale, of which it which, until Parson Maybold displaced was said that "anybody brought up it, exclusively occupied the gallery-a for being drunk and disorderly in the position which commanded a bird's-eye streets of its natal borough had only to view of human frailty. prove that he was a stranger to the place and its liquor to be honorably dismissed by the magistrates, as one overtaken in a fault that no man could guard against who entered the town unawares." It was doubtless this liquor which was the standard in the county, and inspired the indignation Mr. Spinks felt at watered cider, which unhappily was found to be too common. "Such poor liquor,' said Mr. Spinks, makes a man's throat feel very melancholy, and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.'" It must have been this Casterbridge ale which overcame Mr. Poorgrass upon a memorable occasion. So much was he affected that Gabriel Oak accused him of being as drunk as he could stand :

"The gallery looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about it; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery people, as gallery people, beyond their loud-sounding minims and chest notes. Such topics as that the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying Amen; that he had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair of lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the manner ordained by their great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her week's marketing expenses during the first lesson - all news to those below were stale subjects here."

666

"No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that's the matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that's how it is I look double to you - I mean you look double to me.'

"A multiplying eye is a very bad thing,' said Mark Clark.

From the church to the public-house is a natural transition in the villages. The inn, indeed, has entered into the whole life of the people. In Tess's time even the off-license had become so accustomed as to lead to a recognized modification of social habits; and it was in the bedroom at Rolliver's that the villagers, who found it too laborious a task to reach the fully licensed house, the Pure Drop, assembled —“being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up club-walking at my own expense. But Tess lived a generation | d-d-drunkard in such a way!' later than the other heroines of Wes- "I wish you'd show yourself a man sex. In earlier times it was only at of spirit, and not sit whining there!' the inn that the peasants "sought beatitude," and, like John Darbeyfield,

"It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little time,' said Joseph Poorgrass meekly. "Yes; I see two of every sort, as if I were some holy man living in the time of King Noah and entering into the ark. . . . Y-y-y-yes,' he added, becoming much affected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; 'I feel too good for England; I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn't have b-b-been called a

"Show myself a man of spirit?

Ah, well! let me take the name

endeavored" to get up their strength." of drunkard humbly-let me be a man The attempt was excusable before the days of the seven men of Preston, on account of the peculiar potency of the

of contrite knees - let it be! I know that I always do say "Please God" afore I do anything, from my getting