on us before; they regard such fine-paying
as only a small item in their trade expenses."

The people in this black spot of London all
strive to the last to keep out of the workhouse.
The union workhouse planted in a region that
is crammed with poor, must be managed
strictly, or there will be fearful outcry about
keeping down the rates. Are the poor people
in the wrong for keeping their arms wound
about each other? There is not a house, a room,
—of all I visited the other day, I did not see
one room,—in which there was not sickness.
Talk of the workhouse, and the mother says,
in effect, " who would nurse Johnny like me ?
Oh, I could not bear to think that he might
die, and strangers cover up his face!"
Johnny again cries for his mother, or if he be
a man, he says that he would die naked and
in the streets, rather than not give his last
words to his wife.

But, somebody may say, This is
sentimentality. The poor have not such fine
feelings. They get to be brutalised. Often it is so;
but, quite as often certainly, they are refined
by suffering, and have depths of feeling stirred
up within them which the more fortunate are
only now and then made conscious of in
them-selves. I went into one room in this unhappy
place—this core of all the misery in Bethnal
Green—and saw a woman in bed with a three
weeks infant on her arm. She was still too
weak to rise, and her husband had died when
the baby was three days old. She had four
other children, and she panted to get up and
earn. It eased her heart to tell of her
lost love, and the portion of her story that
I here repeat was told by her, in the close
narrow room, with a more touching emphasis
than I can give it here; with tremblings of
the voice and quiverings of the lip that went
warm to the hearts of all who listened:—

"The morning before my husband died,"
she said, " he said to me, ' O Mary, I have
had such a beautiful dream!'—' Have you,
dear?' says I; 'do you think you feel strong
enough to tell it me? '—'Yes,' says he, ' I
dreamt that I was in a large place where
there was a microscopic clock' (he meant a
microscope), ' and I looked through it and
saw the seven heavens all full of light and
happiness, and straight before me, Mary, I
saw a face that was like a face I knew.' 'And
whose face was it, love?' says I.—' I do not
know,' says he; ' but it was more beautiful
than anything I ever saw, and bright and
glorious, and I said to it, Shall I be glorified
with the same glory that you are glorified
with? And the head bowed towards me.
And I said, Am I to die soon? And the
head bowed towards me. And I said, Shall
I die to-morrow? And the face fixed its
eyes on me and went away. And now what
do you think that means?'—'I do not know,'
says I, ' but I think it must mean that God
is going to call you away from this world
where you have had so much trouble, and
your suffering is going to be at an end, but
you must wait His time, and that is why the
head went away when you said, shall I die
to-morrow?'—' I suppose you are right,' says
he, ' and I don't mind dying, but O Mary, it
goes to my heart to leave you and the young
ones' (here the tears spread over the poor
woman's eyes, and her voice began to tremble).
' I am afraid to part with you, I am afraid
for you after I am gone.'—' You must not
think of that,' says I, ' you've been a good
husband, and it's God's will you should go.'
—' I won't go, Mary, without saying good bye
to you,' says he. ' If I can't speak, I'll wave
my hand to you,' says he, 'and you'll know
when I'm going.' 'And so it was, for in his
last hours he could not speak a word, and he
went off so gently that I never should have
known in what minute he died if I had not
seen his hands moving and waving to me
Good-bye before he went."

Such dreams and thoughts belong to quiet
poverty. I have told this incident just as I
heard it; and if I were a daily visitant in Bethnal
Green, I should have many tales of the
same kind to tell.

The people of this district are not criminal.
A lady might walk unharmed at midnight
through their wretched lanes. Crime demands
a certain degree of energy; but it there were
ever any harm in these well-disposed people,
that has been tamed out of them by sheer want.
They have been sinking for years. Ten years
ago, or less, the men were politicians; now,
they have sunk below that stage of discontent.
They are generally very still and hopeless;
cherishing each other; tender not only towards
their own kin, but towards their neighbours;
and they are subdued by sorrow to a manner
strangely resembling the quiet and refined
tone of the most polished circles.

By very different roads, Bethnal Green and
St. James's have arrived at this result. But
there are other elements than poverty that
have in some degree assisted to produce it.
Many of the weavers have French names,
and are descended from French emigrants,
who settled hereabouts, as many of their
countrymen settled in other places up and
down the world after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes; and at that time there were
fields and market gardens near the green
of Bethnal. There are here some runlets of
the best French blood, and great names may
be sometimes met with. The parish clerk,
who seemed to have in him a touch of Spanish
courtesy, claims to be a descendant from
Cervantes. The literary spirit still works in
him; for I found his table covered with
papers and tickets relating to a penny lecture
—twopence to the front seats—that he had
been delivering on Nineveh, Palmyra, Babylon,
and other ancient cities, illustrated with
a little panorama that he had. His lecture
had drawn crowds, seventy had been turned
from the doors, and he was preparing to
repeat it. Then there is a poor fellow in the