Dickens.]

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AFTER A LONG ABSENCE.

19

appearance of England, especially the west,
where the bright green myrtle lingers through
the winter, and the road-side near every town
is bordered with charming cottages. At every
mile I found some new object of admiration,
above all, the healthful fresh cheeks of the
people; especially the sturdy, yet delicate-com-
plexioned lasses tripping away, basket in hand,
from the markets in numbers, startling to one
who had lived long where the arrival of one
fair white face was an event.

The approach to the first great town was
signalised by tokens less pleasing–––nay, ab-
solutely painful;–––beggars, as I passed, stood
in their rags and whined for alms; and others,
not less pitiful in appearance, did not beg, but
looked so wan and miserable, that it made my
heart bleed. I gave to all, so that the man who
drove me stared. He stared still more, when
I told him that I came from a country where
there were no poor, save the drunken and
the idle.

Entering a great town, the whirl, the com-
motion of passers on foot, on horseback, and in
vehicles of all kinds, made me giddy; it was
like a sort of nightmare. The signs of wealth,
the conveniences provided for every imaginable
want, were very strange to me, fresh from a
country where able-bodied labour was always
in demand, while a man thought himself
equal to the longest journey, through an
untrodden country, with a blanket and a tin-
pot for all his furniture, and all his cooking
apparatus.

When I called in the landlord of the Inn to
consult about getting on to Yorkshire in two
days, as I wished to be with my friends as soon
as possible, he said, " If you stay and rest
to-night, you can get there by the railroad to-
morrow morning, in good time to eat your
Christmas dinner." I had never thought of
that, and had only a vague idea what a
railroad was like.

I reached the starting-place next morning,
just in time to take my seat in a departing
train. I started when, with a fearful sound of
labouring machinery, we moved: then whirled
away. I was ashamed of my fears; yet there
were many in that train to whom a sea voyage
would have only been less terrible than the
solitary land journeys on horseback through
the Bush of Australia, which were to me a
mere matter of course. Without accident, I
reached the station near York, where I had
to take a conveyance to reach by a cross
country road the house where I knew that
one of my brothers, farming a few hundred
acres of his own land, assembled as many of
our family as possible at Christmas time.

The little inn was able to supply a gig, driven
by a decayed post-boy. Plunging at once
into questioning conversation, I found an old
acquaintance in the driver, without revealing
who I was. Not many years older than my-
self, soured, disappointed, racked in health, he
took a different view of life to anything I had
yet heard. All along my road through Eng-

land I had been struck by the prosperous
condition of the well-to-do people I had met
in first-class carriages. His occupation, his
glory, was departed; he was obliged to do
anything, and wear anything, instead of his
once smart costume, and once pleasant occu-
pation–––instead of his gay jacket, and rapid
ride, and handsome presents from travellers,
and good dinners from landlords. In doleful
spirits, he had a score of tales to tell of
others worse off than himself–––of landlords of
posting-houses in the workhouse, and smart
four-in-hand coachmen begging their bread
of farmers sunk down to labourers; and other
doleful stories of the fate of those who were
not strong enough for the race of life in
England. Then I began to see there are
two sides to the life that looked so brilliant
out of the plate-glass windows of a first-class
carriage.

The luxuries and comforts which taxes and
turnpikes buy, are well worth the cost to those
who can pay them; those who cannot, will do
better to make shift in a colony. Thus think-
ing and talking, as I approached the place
where, unexpected, I was to appear before a
gathering of my relations, my flow of spirits
died away. The proud consciousness of having
conquered fortune, the beauty of the winter
scenery (for winter, with its hoar frost shading
the trees and foliage, has strange dazzling
beauty to the eyes of those who have been
accustomed to the one perpetual green-brown
of semi-tropical Australia) had filled me full
to overflowing with bounding joyousness.
Gaily I answered back to the " Good night,
master," of the passing peasantry, and vigor-
ously puffed at my favourite pipe, in clouds
that rivalled and rolled along with the clouds
of mist that rose from the sweating horses.
But the decayed postilion's stories of misery,
in which he seemed to revel, damped me. My
pipe went out, and my chin sunk despoud-
ingly on my breast. At length I asked, " Did
he know the Barnards? " " Oh, yes, he knew
them all." Mr. John had been very lucky
with the railroad through one of his farms.
He had ridden a pair at Miss Margaret's
wedding, and driven a mourning coach at
Miss Mary's funeral. The mare in the gig
had belonged to Mr. John, and had been a
rare good hunter. Mr. Robert had doctored
him for his rheumatics. " Did he know any
more ? " " Oh, yes; there was Master Charles;
he went abroad somewhere to furren parts.
Some people say he's dead, got killed, or
hung, or something; and some say he's made
a power of money. He was a wild slip of a
lad. Many a time he's been out in the roads
with some one I know very well, snaring
hares and smoking of pheasants. There's a
mark on my forehead now, where I fell, when
he put a furze bush under the tail of a colt I
was breaking. He was a droll chap, surely."
There was scarcely a kind feeling in the poor
man's breast. The loss of his occupation,
poverty, and drink, had sadly changed the fine