Part 12

Yet a few days' sojourn in the borough would afford a lover of antiquity no inferior treat. The massive wall and arched vaults of a ruin, believed to have formed part of a temple of Janus during the ages that Britain was under Roman sway,—the ivied remains of the noble abbey where the imperious and vice-regal Wolsey "laid his bones,"—the sternly frowning "Newarke," or entrance-tower to the castle of the Grantmesnels, Bellomonts, Blanchmaines, De Montforts, Plantagenets, and other proud Earls of Leicester,—the solitary wooded mound on which the castle itself anciently stood,—the rich minute carving of the old churches,—the quaint interior of the old town-hall,—the grotesque exterior of much of the really ancient part of the town, composed of dwellings striped with timber and plaster, and decked with ornamented or overhanging gables,—dwellings wherein the soldiers of the fated kingly Crookt-back were billeted on the night before Bosworth-field,—these, and sundry other features of historic chronicle and change, could not fail to awaken eager interest in an antiquarian. Our story, however, concerns itself less with the outward than the inward, and regards rather the misery of the living than the pride of the dead.

Passing along the ancient line of highway from York to London, from the churchless burial-yard of St. Leonard, over the old North bridge, revealing the meandering Soar and the meadows of the old monks; by the curious Gothic west-door of the very ancient church of All Saints, that almost compels you to stop and look at it; and then, by the transverse streets, where the venerable "high cross" was taken down but a few years ago, and reaching that part of the ancient principal line of street called "Southgate," where modern Goths so lately took down that most interesting historical relic, the house in which the last regal Plantagenet slept the night before his death; (a splendid gable filled with a world of old English associations, and breathing a wholesome lesson to despotism from every atom of its mouldering substance!) the traveller would come to a ruinous-looking entry of a street on his right, bearing the chivalrous designation of "Red Cross Street." At the door of a low, crumbling house about halfway down this ancient bye-street, a dissenting minister stopped one winter's evening some eight-and-twenty years ago, to make his usual call of duty and benevolence. His gentle knock, however, was not answered; and, before he could repeat it, he was saluted hastily by a rich manufacturer, a member of his congregation, who was passing by on some business errand.

"You are the very man I wanted to see," said the minister in a very earnest tone, seizing the manufacturer by one arm, as if he feared the man of business might feel disposed to escape him: "I want half an hour's conversation with you, sir."

"But I cannot stay now, sir," replied the manufacturer; "will you join me in my morning ride in the gig to-morrow? Do, sir; it will do you good."

"I will, I will; thank you, sir," answered the minister, in a quick, nervous way that seemed to be usual with him; and they shook hands with great apparent fervour, and bid each other "good night."

The dissenting minister did not find entrance into the low, ruined-looking house, until a neighbour or two had forced open the door. A light was then brought, and a picture of affecting interest was revealed. A venerable silver-haired man lay breathing his last; and by the side of his humble bed, with folded hands, knelt she who had been the partaker of his joys and sorrows for sixty years, lost to all consciousness except that of mental prayer for her departing husband. The sound of the minister's voice seemed to arouse her for a moment; but she relapsed again into complete obliviousness of all things, save the one absorbing feeling created by the view of that gasping pallid form that lay before her. So the minister knelt, likewise; and when the neighbours who had entered with him had followed his example he prayed audibly and earnestly, yet so reverently and pathetically, that, while he prayed and wept, the neighbours thought themselves in the presence of some superior being, with a soul of compass to embrace and bless the whole human race, rather than a mere mortal. The face of the dying man kindled, too, with wondrous feeling, when he heard the sounds of that well-known and beloved voice, though he had seemed past consciousness but a few moments before. And when the minister paused in his petition, and saw the aged man's look fixed upon him, he said, with unutterable sweetness and tenderness,—

"William, my dear old friend, is all well within?—is your hope still blooming and full of immortality?"

The aged man raised his withered right hand with a last effort—waved it thrice—smiled with an ineffable smile,—and expired!

The minister was raising the aged and speechless widow from her kneeling posture, and placing her in an arm-chair, when her married daughter and several other neighbours entered the house of death. The minister recognised the daughter, and, after committing the widow earnestly to her care, emptied his waistcoat pocket of the silver it contained, and gave it, without counting, into the hands of the astonished young woman, who stood staring, while the good man snatched up his hat, and, saying "God bless you all! I'll call again to-morrow: God bless you all!" hurried away in a moment.——

A tall, grave-looking man, in the habit of a gentleman, bowed courteously to the dissenting minister, as he was turning the corner of the High Street, and, addressing him by his name, uttered the customary observations on the severity of the weather.

"Ah, my dear sir," spake the dissenting minister, unable, from the state of his feelings, to answer in the same strain, "I wish I had had you with me a quarter of an hour ago."

"Why, sir?" asked the gentleman.

"That you might have seen, for yourself, how a Christian can die," answered the minister.

"Ah!" replied the gentleman, with a look of serious concern, "there you, and all truly Christian ministers, find a field of more exalted enterprise than the whole world of turmoil and strife, put together, can furnish. I envy you, my dear sir—I envy you, more than I can express to you."

"It is, indeed, a field of exalted, of truly glorious enterprise, the visiting of death-beds—the pouring of heavenly consolation into the spirit that is leaving its frail clay tabernacle, and the gladdening of the human wretchedness which is left to mourn and weep," burst forth the good minister, forgetting that he stood in the bleak, cold, open street, and not in his pulpit; "but, oh, my good friend, what a dark, disconsolate scene would your Free-thinking make of the chamber of death, were it as universally spread as you wish it to be!"

"It is there where you always have the advantage of me, sir," rejoined the gentleman; "I have acknowledged it, again and again; and I feel the force of that reflection so powerfully, sometimes, that I half resolve to spend the remainder of my life in some scheme of philanthropy, and, meanwhile, join in persuading men to believe Christianity, although I do not believe its historical evidences are worth a straw——"

"But that would be wrong, sir!" said the minister interrupting the other, very earnestly.

"So I think, sir," continued the gentleman; "and yet I feel sometimes as if I should become guilty of a crime by striving to take away what I regard as a pleasant deceit from men,—their chance, by imbibing a full confidence in Christianity, of expiring not merely with calmness, but with rapturous joy and triumph. Free-thinking will never enable even the largest intellect, the most highly cultivated man, to die thus; much less will it give such a death to an imperfectly educated or ignorant man. But then, I reflect again, that it would be morally and veritably criminal in me to join in strengthening what I sincerely believe to be falsehood."

"And so it would, sir," said the dissenting minister, taking the gentleman's arm, who offered it, that they might walk on to avoid some degree of the cold; "so it would, sir: it would render you a very contemptible creature. Let me tell you, sir, that with all the delight I experience in fulfilling some little of my duty as a Christian minister, the remembrance of it would not move me one inch towards the bed of a dying man with the view of offering him the consolations of revealed religion—if I believed such consolations to be a mere farce. I would scorn to mock him with false hopes. You know how deeply I regret your scepticism, my dear sir; but I would not see you veil it through a spurious tenderness. No, sir: truth and sincerity are the purest jewels in human character; even pity and benevolence, themselves, are gems of inferior water."

"I wish all Christians were like yourself," said the gentleman, after a pause of admiration for the great and good being with whom he felt it a real privilege to walk; "but I see so little practice of goodness from the hundreds around me who profess a religion that enthrones it, that the sight tends much to confirm me in my old opinions."

"Indeed, sir," observed the minister, in a very grave tone, "I must tell you that you will be guilty of great self-deceit, if you imagine that the wickedness of hypocrites, or the slackness of lukewarm professors, will form a valid excuse for your rejection of Christ's mission, should you, one day, prove it true."

"I know it, my dear sir," replied the gentleman; "I know it well; though I thank you for your kind and well-meant zeal in reminding me of it. I will tell you one thought of mine, however,—and it is one that fixes itself very forcibly before my judgment,—if callousness to the sufferings of their workmen continues to increase among the manufacturers as rapidly as it has increased for the last ten years, Christianity will be openly scoffed at by the poor of the next generation, in the very streets where we are now walking."

"You have only expressed what I expressed last Sunday morning from my own pulpit, sir," returned the minister,—seeming too deeply affected with his strong belief of the probability of such an event to be able to add more.

"I hear that the wretched framework-knitters suffer more and more from abatements of wages and other encroachments upon their means of subsistence, of the most unfeeling and unprincipled character," resumed the gentleman; "and although hundreds are without work at the present time, and the complaints of suffering from want of food, fuel, and clothing, are so loud and frequent, yet not a single rich manufacturer of the many that profess religion, in Leicester, proposes to open a public subscription for the poor, according to the humane custom of past times. I heard a whisper that you had begun to stir up the languid charity of some of your friends towards the commencement of a subscription: was I rightly informed, sir?"

"It is the very subject I intend to broach to Mr.——, to-morrow morning," replied the minister, with an enthusiastic glow suffusing his expressive face.

"Please place your own name for that sum somewhere on the list," said the gentleman, taking a note for 20_l._ out of his pocket-book and giving it to the minister.

The good preacher was trying to stifle his grateful tears, in order to thank the sceptic,—but the latter bowed and strode away; and the good preacher, as he walked towards his own house in deep reflective silence, had many thoughts of the true interpretation of such words as "infidel" and "Christian" that would have startled his audience, if he had uttered them before it on the following Sunday.

In spite of an agonised bodily system, the minister was early abroad the next morning, and his glorious brow beamed with pleasure, when the maid-servant announced that the rich manufacturer's gig was at the door, and the conversation was near that he hoped would result in the effective commencement of a subscription to relieve the misery, and hunger, and cold, and disease, under which the depressed stockingers and their families were groaning that severe winter. Yet the philanthropist, with all his guilelessness, knew the man he had to deal with, and proceeded in a somewhat circumlocutory way to his object. In the end, he enforced the claims of man as a brother, the admirableness and divinity of charity, and the indefeasible rights of the working man as a substantial agent in the creation of wealth, with so much of the potentiality of his transcendent eloquence, that the manufacturer, in spite of the resistance his heart's avarice made to the godlike theme, assented to the proposal that he should begin the public subscription. But how heart-stricken with grief and shame did the golden-tongued pleader feel when, on producing the little book he had prepared for collecting the names of subscribers, the rich manufacturer hesitated as soon as he had written his name, bit the end of his cedar pencil, and then hastily put five pounds at the end of his name! The minister did not thank him, for his soul was too noble to permit his tongue to utter one word which his heart would not accompany: but he had, again, some peculiar thoughts about the true interpretation of the words "infidel" and "Christian."

Neither was the good man to be damped by such an inauspicious beginning; but begging Mr.——would not drive on again till he, the minister, had got safely out of the gig, bid the rich churl "good morning," posted away to the house of another "of whom the world was not worthy," but with whom Leicester was likewise blessed at that time: the Rev. Mr. Robinson, vicar of St. Mary's, stayed till that good man formed a little collecting book, and then left him to divide the work of canvassing the town for names to form the subscription list. Assisted occasionally by others, the dissenting minister persevered, till, in the lapse of several days, and at the cost to himself of excruciating visitations of increased pain in the night season, he completed such a list as gave effectual relief to the hundreds of his suffering fellow-creatures then inhabiting Leicester.

That labour was no sooner ended than he commenced a close inquiry into the real state of the staple trade of the town; and, finding that the reports of oppression and extortion, the foul fruits of avaricious competition, were not exaggerated, he sat down and wrote an appeal in behalf of the suffering framework-knitters that might have jeopardied the favour and acceptance of a less able preacher with the wealthier members of his congregation.

It might be imprudent to go on: the starving stockingers of Leicester have no longer such an advocate; and, as highly as some profess to esteem the memory of the truly good, they may feel angered by this introduction of a portrait which, as imperfectly as it is delineated, they will already have recognised to their shame. If a stranger to old Leicester should ask whose is the portrait this faint limning is intended to call to memory, it is hoped it will not be deemed an act of desecration to introduce, in a volume of merely fugitive essays, a name too truly holy to be lightly mentioned,—a name inscribed, ineffaceably, in English literature, by the sunbeam of his peerless and hallowed eloquence to whom it belonged,—the name of ROBERT HALL.

"MERRIE ENGLAND"—NO MORE!

The present generation,—the generation succeeding that in which the eloquent philanthropist and the sceptical gentleman lived and conversed,—has it witnessed any verification of the serious prophecy uttered in that winter evening's conversation in the streets of Leicester? The following brief but truthful sketch will furnish an answer.

On an April morning in forty-two—scarcely four years bygone,—a group of five or six destitute-looking men were standing on a well-known space in Leicester, where the frustrum of a Roman milestone (surmounted, in true Gothic style, with a fantastic cross) was preserved within an iron palisade, and where the long narrow avenue of Barkby Lane, enters the wide trading street called Belgrave Gate. The paleness and dejection of the men's faces, as well as the ragged condition of their clothing, would have told how fearfully they were struggling with poverty and want, if their words had not been overheard.

"Never mind the lad, John," said the tallest and somewhat the hardest-featured man of the party; "he can't be worse off than he would have been at home, let him be where he will. What's the use of grieving about him? He was tired of pining at home, no doubt, and has gone to try if he can't mend his luck. You'll hear of him again, soon, from some quarter or other."

"But I can't satisfy myself about him, in that way, George," replied the man to whom this rough exhortation was addressed; "if the foolish lad be drawn into company that tempts him to steal, I may have to hear him sentenced to transportation, and that would be no joke, George."

"I see nothing so very serious, even in that," observed another of the group; "I would as lief be transported to-morrow as stay here to starve, as I've done for the last six months."

"It would seem serious to me, though," rejoined John, "to see my own child transported."

"Why, John, to men that scorn to steal, in spite of starvation," resumed George, "it's painful to see any child, or man either, transported: but where's the real disgrace of it? The man that pronounces the sentence is, in nine cases out of ten, a bigger villain than him that's called 'the criminal.' Disgrace is only a name—a mere name, you know, John."

"I'm aware there's a good deal o' truth in that," replied John; "the names of things would be altered a good deal, if the world was set right: but, as wrong as things are now, yet I hope my lad will never steal, and have to be sentenced to transportation. I've often had to hear him cry for bread, since he was born, and had none to give him: but I would sooner see him perish with hunger than live to hear him transported, for I think it would break my heart;—and God Almighty forbid I ever should have to hear it!"

"Goddle Mitey!" said George, pronouncing the syllables in a mocking manner, and setting up a bitter laugh, which was joined by every member of the group, except the mournful man who had just spoken; "who told thee there was one? Thy grandmother and the parsons? Don't talk such nonsense any more, John! it's time we all gave it over: they've managed to grind men to the dust with their priestcraft, and we shall never be righted till we throw it off!"

"No, no," chimed in another, immediately; "they may cant and prate about it: but, if their God existed, he would never permit us to suffer as we do!"

"Well, I'm come seriously to the same conclusion," said one who had not spoken before, and was the palest and thinnest of the group: "I think all their talk about a Providence that disposes the lot of men differently here, 'for His Own great mysterious purposes,' as they phrase it, is mere mysterious humbug, to keep us quiet. What purpose could a being have, who, they say, is as infinitely good as he is infinitely powerful, in placing me where I must undergo insult and starvation, while He places that man,—the oppressor and grinder, who is riding past now, in his gig,—in plenty and abundance?"

"Right, Benjamin," said George; "they can't get quit of their difficulty, quibble as they may: if they bedaub us with such nicknames as 'Atheistical Socialists,' we can defy them to make the riddle plainer by their own Jonathan Edwards, that they say good Robert Hall read over thirteen times, and pronounced 'irrefragable.'"

"Just so," resumed Benjamin, "whether man be called a 'Creature of Circumstance,' or a 'Creature of Necessity,' it amounts to the same thing. And, then, none of the Arminian sects can make out a case: they only prove the same thing as the Calvinist and the Socialist, when their blundering argument is sifted to the bottom."

"So that, if there be a Providence," continued George, "it has appointed, or permitted,—which they like, for it comes to the same,—that old——should fling the three dozen hose in your face last November, and that you should be out of work, and pine ever since; it appointed that I should get a few potatoes or a herring, by begging, or go without food altogether, some days since Christmas; and that each of us here, though we are willing to work, should have to starve; while it appointed that the mayor should live in a fine house, and swell his riches, by charging _whole_ frame-rents, month after month, to scores of poor starving stockingers that had from him but half week's work."

"And, with all their talk about piety," rejoined Benjamin, "I think there is no piety at all in believing in the existence of such a Providence: and since, it appears, it can't be proved that Providence is of any other character, if there be One at all, I think it less impious to believe in None."

John stood by while this conversation was going on; but he heard little of it,—for his heart was too heavy with concern for his child,—and, in a little time, he took his way, silently and slowly, towards other groups of unemployed and equally destitute men, who were standing on the wider space of ground, at the junction of several streets,—a locality known by the names of "the Coal-hill," and "the Hay-market," from the nature of the merchandise sold there, at different periods, in the open air.

"Have you found the lad yet?" said one of John's acquaintances, when he reached the outermost group.

"No, William," replied the downcast father; "and I begin to have some very troublesome fears about him, I'll assure you."

"But why should you, John?" expostulated the other; "he's only gone to try if he can't mend himself——Look you, John!" he said, pointing excitedly at what he suddenly saw; "there he goes, with the recruiting serjeant!"

The father ran towards the soldier and his child; and every group on the Coal-hill was speedily in motion when they saw and heard the father endeavouring to drag off the lad from the soldier, who seized the arm of his prize, and endeavoured to detain him. An increasing crowd soon hemmed in the party,—a great tumult arose,—and three policemen were speedily on the spot.

"Stick to your resolution, my boy!" cried the soldier, grasping the lad's arm with all his might; "you'll never want bread nor clothes in the army."

"But he'll be a sold slave, and must be shot at, like a dog!" cried the father, striving to rescue his child,—a pale, tall stripling, who seemed to be but sixteen or seventeen years of age.

"Man-butcher!—Blood-hound!" shouted several voices in the crowd: whereat the policemen raised their staves, and called aloud to the crowd to "stand back!"

"I demand, in the Queen's name, that you make this fellow loose his hold of my recruit!" said the soldier, in a loud, angry tone, to the policemen; two of whom seemed to be about obeying him, when a dark, stern-browed man among the crowd, of much more strong and sinewy appearance than the majority of the working multitude who composed it, stepped forward, and said,—

"Let any policemen touch him that dare! If they do they shall repent it! There's no law to prevent a father from taking hold of his own child's arm to hinder him from playing the fool!"

The men in blue slunk back at these words; and the soldier himself seemed intimidated at perceiving the father's cause taken up by an individual of such determination.

"Tom," said the determined man to the lad, "have you taken the soldier's money?"

"Not yet," answered the lad, after a few moments' hesitation.