rather, perhaps, through the operation of certain irresistible principles, it is acquiring something like an ascendancy, and when communities enter upon this part of their career, it is seldom found easy to stop them. Every day strengthens the cause of progress. Legislators and ministers, the leaders of parties, and the leaders of the press, agree in proclaiming this truth. The world, therefore, may yet hope to witness something like real wisdom in "another place," not indeed indigenous and of spontaneous growth, but transferred thither from without, in ways most novel and anomalous. Already the grim passages of reform display themselves in the political horizon, though the habitual and professional soothsayers of the nation declare they can discover no such things, but, on the contrary, seem fully persuaded that, for centuries to come, everything will proceed in the regular track. However, as the future belongs to everybody, we are free to fashion it as we please, and our pleasure is to think that it will not in all things resemble the past.

THE PAUPER FUNERAL.

AMONG the country poor there is no object which appeals so touchingly to our commiseration as the aged widow. She is often alone in the world, a solitary and silent sufferer, where the eye of compassion seldom reaches her retreat, and the hand of charity doles out but a parsimonious bounty. The groans of her misery pass unheard or unheeded, and she lingers out the painful remnant of a wretched life under the tyranny of parish legislation, while struggling beneath the crushing burthen of age, helplessness, and want. To her the world is a dungeon, surmounted by gorgeous pinnacles and towers, the glories of which she is unable to reach; but while she sees their splendours afar off, all within her sphere of action is gloom and desolation. Surrounded by an atmosphere of blighting poverty, her ear assailed by the hum of busy life-busy in crime, and teeming with the seeds of deathshe looks in vain for sympathy from those whose bosoms are estranged by misery, and but too commonly hardened in sin. To her there appears neither ebb nor flow in the turbid stream of

Time. It seems stagnant, and dark with woe. No ray of joyous light falls on it, but the bitters of misery are infused with poisonous prevalence, until the noxious draught mingles fatally with the springs of existence, and stops the languid current from that mysterious fountain. Friendless and forlorn, she lives unpitied, and dies unregretted. If she has children, they are at too great a distance to perform their filial duties round the bed of an aged mother. They are too scantily supplied, from the paradise of enjoyment, to cast any flowers upon the barren path of her pilgrimage. The wheels of Time move sullenly along, clogged with the accumulating weight of their own cares, and these too frequently render them insensible to the severer sufferings of those who claim their sympathy. They behold not the writhings of a decrepit and deserted parent; they hear not her sighs; they witness not her lamentations. She is desolate and alone. She basks in the sunshine, but it warms her not it does but mock her misery. The frost of winter is within the well, and the waters of life are congealing at the spring. The tempest roars over her dwelling of mud and straw, as if to drown the sighs she is perpetually heaving at the dismal uniformity of her lot.

During a residence of two years in the country, I was an eye-witness to much of the wretchedness endured by this bereaved class of our fellow-creatures, and of a poor widow, more especially, whose character interested me much, from the unrepining patience with which she submitted to a lot of protracted and unrelieved privation. I will endeavour to trace a few of the very sombre shadows of her most disastrous course, pursuing the sorrowful detail of her last moments, and what immediately followed. I was in the habit of visiting her two or three times a-week, during the term of my residence in her neighbourhood; and, though my means were on too narrow a scale to admit of my doing much, I did not, therefore, withhold the little I could spare from a store so straitened as scarcely to suffice for my own most frugal wants.

The object of my so limited bounty was in her eightieth year, so curved by age and infirmity as to be almost dwarfed, and so feeble as to be all but helpless. Her breath came from her in short gasps, as if her lungs had no longer room to play, and her articulation was consequently so obstructed, that to a stranger she was scarcely intelligible. Her eye was dim and glazed, while the lid, flaccid and shrivelled, almost covered the dull orb, beneath which it peered through the narrow opening, with that lack-lustre

expression so peculiar to age, on which the hand of infirmity has laid its last burthen.

66

The hovel-for such it was-occupied by this bereaved woman had been originally erected for cattle. The walls were of mud, rising about five feet above the earth, surmounted by a narrow, thatched roof, double the height of the walls, and so o'erpatched' by ill-practised hands, as, like the clothes of Otway's hag, and no less of the poor old inmate, to speak "variety of wretchedness. Within, the naked straw-for there was no ceiling-wa covered with cobwebs, so heavy with dust as to be nearly detached from the thatch; and those strong incrustations engendered in damp localities, where foul and fetid exhalations continually form the most noxious deposits, which had, no doubt, in this den of suffering poverty, been the gradual accumulations of years. From them there was perpetually disengaged a pungent vapour, which considerably impeded the respiration, and imparted so nauseous a smell that it was a positive penalty to remain, even for a few minutes, beneath the roof of this miserable habitation. A small window, inserted when the shed was converted into what the proprietor, with the plausible discretion of a parochial landlord, termed a cottage, was nearly covered with paper, in order to supply the panes of glass which the rude winds, or the ruder imps of the neighbouring hamlet, had wantonly broken. This aperture, called a window, though it paid no tax to the State, was about two feet square, and had been originally glazed, from the fragments of a worn-out cucumber frame, purchased, in the post town, by the liberal owner of the widow's tenement, at the time of its erection. There was scarcely space enough for the admission of fresh air-thus, the atmosphere within was at all times stagnant and unwholesome. The floor, originally paved with broken bricks, had sank into innumerable hollows, so as to render any footing, unaccustomed to its numerous inequalities, extremely insecure. In one corner of the miserable apartment was a straw pallet, placed upon the floor, and covered with a tattered rug. Across this was laid a long oaken staff, with which the aged creature used nightly to scare the rats, when they invaded her frequently sleepless pillow. These voracious creatures were the only companions of her nightly solitude; and she was obliged to suspend from one of the cross-beams that supported the roof, her small modicum of meal, in order to secure it from their nocturnal depredations.

For this hovel the wretched tenant paid ninepence a-week out of the half-crown allowed by the parish, leaving one shilling and ninepence for clothes and maintenance. She had no other resources; and yet, so rooted was her aversion to the confinement of a workhouse, that she preferred struggling with the severest privations, contriving to live on this pittance, her chief food being meal and potatoes. Her beverage consisted almost entirely of the leaves of tea which had been twice infused—once by the mistress of one of the few families which had servants in the neighbourhood, and secondly by those servants, who, when they had obtained all they could from them, by repeated applications of boiling water, bestowed them upon the widow as an acknowledged luxury. These desiccated tea-leaves the grateful creature stewed, day after day, swallowing the diluted dingy infusion with an expressed satisfaction and relish that would have amazed a modern sybarite, and have forced a cry of wonder from the sternest of those ancient simpletons who gloried in privation as their summum bonum, and in physical evil as the consummation of human excellence. As I have already said, her daily food was meal and a few potatoes-when she could get them. Beyond what casual charity supplied-and this was extremely little-these were her only nutriment. And yet she daily blessed God for his mercies, with a feeling and fervour that has often melted my heart, while it probed my conscience. There was nothing counterfeit in her submission to the divine infliction-it was radical and sincere. Her trial was a sore one, yet she did not repine; for under every pang of her bereavement she rose from it but the more assured that there was treasure laid up for her in another and a better world.

The term of her pilgrimage was now rapidly verging towards its close. The solemn warning of death had been already given, in her daily increasing weakness, which reduced her frame to a state of pitiable prostration.

One morning I entered her dismal dwelling, and found her stretched upon the hard, comfortless bed-on which she had scarcely, for years, passed a night of uninterrupted repose-apparently in the last stage of her wretched life. She had been attacked, the day previously, with cholera, and it had left her so feeble that she could with difficulty move her almost fleshless limbs. As soon, however, as I entered she managed to raise herself from the hard pallet on which she was lying, and having

welcomed my presence with her usual benediction of "God bless you," began to repeat one of Watts's hymns, with a pathos and fervour that surprised me. The tears trickled copiously down her grimed and channelled cheeks, as she poured out this humble effusion, and talked of God's mercy, in a languid whisper, but with visible earnestness, as if she had been one of the most distinguished of his creatures. "What a blessing," she observed, with the same oppressed utterance, " that the God of all mercy has turned my heart to himself; for I am happy, even in the midst of this worldly misery. It has been, however, no world of misery to me; for though my path is straitened, it is, nevertheless, the Christian's path-and that is a narrow one-to the paradise of saints. My body has suffered; but, having no sore upon my conscience, my mind has been generally at rest. I can die without repining, though I rejoice with trembling.''

During this melancholy interview the parish doctor entered. This was his first visit since her terrible attack of the previous day. He was a rough, coarse man, with a dim, obtuse countenance, which indicated insensibility of heart so obviously, that you instinctively shrank from his approach. He seemed hale and hearty, though past the prime of life; but the clownish turn of his frame, and his vulgar freedom of address, at once showed that he was no longer mindful of the "rock whence he was hewed, or the hole of the pit whence he was digged." His intensely black, greasy hair, and sallow complexion; his dark, glaring eyes, peering from under a pair of galled lids, on which the lashes no longer consented to grow; his full, purple lips, scaled, cracked, and fenced with a double row of broad yellow teeth; his large, ungainly figure, arrayed in a suit of dingy black, added to his harsh, Hibernian accent, altogether fixed on the mind of the beholder, at the first glance, an impression of obdurate insensibility and callous indifference. There was a coarse, sinister grin upon his features as he entered, which showed how little he was affected by scenes of human suffering. Passing close by where I was seated-upon an inverted pail, there being no chair among the poor widow's household stuff-he took no notice whatever of my presence, but walking hurriedly up to the tattered bed upon which his miserable patient lay, said, in a quick, harsh tone

66

Well, mother, how are ye?" At the same time grasping her wrist, and counting her pulse by a large silver watch, that ticked almost as loud as a Dutch clock. The poor sufferer opened