lad, while another quite as clearly belongs | but which will never be realized; a sor 0 to our own times:

'The titled tories who keep you down

Which you cannot endure,
And the reason I to tell am bound

dares to intrude on the privacy of the Royal mourners, but with kindly hand touches on the many virtues of the departed Prince, You're but working men-and poor.' claiming for him that from men of all ranks,

There are some ten other stanzas of a like calibre, but though Mr. Catnach has enriched them with a most graphic woodcut (date 1832) representing one Bishop, the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Robert Peel, headed by 'little Johnny' carrying a banner of Victoria and Reform,' all issuing in triumph from St. Stephen's School,' the whole thing is a mere piece of idle banter, which never rises above the level of a noisy chorus between people and bobbies, roughs and iron railings.

Even in the two latest of the Political Ballads, bearing date the middle of February, just as Parliament opened, and the titled Tories were tried, convicted, and condemned at the Agricultural Hall under the fiery sway of the impassioned O'Donoghue before it was even known for what crimes they were indicted even in these there is little more than abuse for that 'poor outcast' the member for Calne, and unfortunate Mr. Doulton.

The Royal Ballads are but three in number, - on the death of the Prince Consort, the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and the birth of his eldest son, and of these we may take, as a sample, the Elegy on the Death of H.R.H. Prince Albert,' surmounted by a portrait of the Prince as he appeared on the morning of his Marriage,' and edged with a broad margin of black. The poet is lost in grief, and his mournful numbers flow heavily as he tells of 'Britannia lamenting and calling on the daughters of Britain to join in sorrowful condolence with their beloved Queen:

'We grieve for thy loss, Queen Victoria
And all over Britain deplore
Thy Consort, thy own dearest Consort
Is gone, and thy Albert's no more.'

He extols her Majesty as 'A mother, a
Queen, and a wife,' and implores the choi-
cest blessings of Heaven on her, and on the
dear Royal children,' who

'Their dear royal hearts are bewildering
On earth they will see him no more;
He is gone, he is gone now before them,
He is gone to that sad silent bourne
Where numbers have travelled before him,
And from which there can no one return.'

This
may be very homely sympathy, but it
is respectful and hearty. The poet hardly

'From all men below and above'

he won universal love and respect, that for The Institutions he was always the right man,' while the poor found in him a free and helping hand.' And in these words the writer not only expresses the verdict of the nation but gives utterance to a far deeper feeling of loyal sympathy with his bereaved Queen, which triumphs over all the miseries of sorry rhyme and indifferent orthography.

Thousands and tens of thousands of Her

Majesty's poorest subjects were purchasers of this Halfpenny Ballad, and felt the national loss as deeply as those who could appreciate the poet Laureate's nobler song of

sorrow

'O silent Father of our Kings to be Mourned in this golden hour of Jubilee.'*

These Halfpenny Sheets form almost the entire poetry of Seven Dials, and though they teach little or no history, they show, at least, what kind of Poetry finds the most favourable reception and the readiest sale among our lowest classes. As far as we can ascertain, there are in London eight or ten publishers of the Fortey and Disley stamp

though not on so large a scale. Of Ballad-singers and patterers of prose recitations (such as the Political Catechism') there may be about a hundred scattered over the metropolis, who haunt such locali ties as the New Cut, Tottenham Court Road, Whitechapel, and Clerkenwell Green; and according to the weather, the state of trade, and the character of their wares, earn a scanty or a jovial living by chanting such strains as we have now laid before our readers. Songs if they're over-religious,' says one minstrel, 'don't sell at all; though a tidy moral does werry well. But a good, awful, murder's the thing. I've knowed,' says our authority, a man sell a reamt a day of them, that's twenty dozen you know;" and this sale may go on for days, so that, with forty or fifty men at work as minstrels, a popular Ballad will soon attain a circulation of thirty or forty or fifty thousand. Now and then Catnach' himself.

composes

* Tennyson's 'Exhibition Ode,' July, 1862. † A ream costs him 3s. in Seven Dials, and these he retails at a halfpenny each, or even a penny, if the murder is a very fearful one, as in Muller's case, thus reaping a harvest of 250 or 300 per cent.

OR

2

ba

red

a Song, and in this case is saved the cost of copyright, though his expenses are very trifling, even when he has to purchase it. If one of the patterers writes a Ballad on a taking subject, he hastens at once to Seven Dials, where, if accepted, his reward is a glass of rum, a slice of cake, and five dozen copies,' which, if the accident or murder be a very awful one, are struck off for him while he waits. A murder always sells well, so does a fire, or a fearful railway accident. A good love story embracing

We have submitted this wretched doggerel to our readers, that they may form some idea of the kind of Street Literature which is still popular with so many of the lower classes. It is humiliating, in the midst of all the schools and teaching of the present day, to find such rubbish continually poured forth, and eagerly read. Still there are some redeeming features in this weary waste. Taken as a whole, the moral tone of the ballads, if not lofty, is certainly not bad; and the number of single stanzas that could not be quoted in these pages on account of their gross or indecent language is very small; while that of entire Ballads, to be excluded on the same ground, is still (2 smaller.

in the Halfpenny Ballads of Seven Dials; though there is abundance of slang, vulgarity, and occasional coarseness of expression. For open indecency and grosser pruriency we must go to a class of songs and song-books, authors and customers, of a higher class; to penny and twopenný and sixpenny packets of uncleanness, to some of the minor Music Halls, where delicacies are to be had at a price beyond the reach of the New Cut. The men who wrote the filthy Ballads in the Roxburghe Collec'infidi perjuria nautæ tion were of a far higher class than those Deceptamque dolo nympham '* who write for Seven Dials; and they found often does fairly; but Politics among the higher readers amid the wide-spread deep lowest class are a drug. Even the famous depravity of their day. The thousands "Ballad on Pam's death didn't do much ex- who now buy the Halfpenny Ballads of St. cept among the better sort of people;' and Giles's, would rise to better taste, and the though the roughs are fond enough of shout-appreciation of higher models, if they had ing Reform, they don't care, it would seem, a higher class of authors, and a nobler range to spend money on it. of verse. For, though the poet to reach them must needs be to some extent one of themselves, must understand their ways of life, and forms of speech, there is no need that he should be as ignorant, or vulgar, or vitiated as those for whom he writes. The Disley or Fortey of the day prints his ten or twenty thousand of 'The Oakham Poachers,' or The Prince of Wales' Baby, because these subjects are all the rage at the moment, and he can get no better minstrelsy so cheap. But there are yet in the minds and hearts of the poorest class, who can read and enjoy a Halfpenny Ballad on the Awful Accident in Hyde Park,' deeper feelings, and purer tastes ready to spring up under the least culture, and, if fairly appealed to, to be brought out into full life and bear abundant and goodly fruit. They have no peculiar relish for bad spelling, or for faulty rhyme. Feeling and intelligence, a sense of such inborn goodness as Miss Nightingale's; a love of fair play, and an old-fashioned liking for what is true and brave; a keen sense of the ludicrous, and deep current of loyalty to the throne and to their native land, yet linger in the thousands who look to Seven Dials for inspiration. If any real poet should arise who would be content to sing in good, plain, honest Saxon, such topics as they love to hear; of men and women great in goodness or in vice, of life and death in their widest sense, of crime and disaster, of human sorrows and joys whether in Chick Lane or Windsor Castle; he would achieve an immortality not far below that of the silver clarion' of Tennyson himself. We do not despair of his advent, and the sooner he comes the better for Seven Dials; and for us all.

Compared with a volume of the famous Roxburghe Ballads,' which range between the years 1560 and 1700, our present five hundred from Seven Dials are models of purity and cleanliness. In the second vol ume of that famous collection there are about 580 Ballads, or broadsides, printed as hours still are on sheets of the thinnest and commonest paper; and at least three-fourths of these (especially of the later dates) are 80 grossly, openly indecent, as to be incap able of quotation. A few are slightly political, and refer to such topics as the Mealtub Plot; and a few to such themes as shipwrecks, and naval fights; but the majority are broadly and coarsely amorous; evidently written by persons above the lowest rank, for the express purpose of raising indecent and unclean thoughts in the minds of their readers; not by hinted indelicacy or vulgar coarseness of style, but by studied filthiness. No such nastiness is to be found * V. Bourne. 'Poemata.'

CHAPTER XIV.

NEXT morning Mr. Brownlow was not well
enough to go to business. He was not ill. He
repeated the assurance a score of times to him-
self and to his children. He had not slept well,
that was all and perhaps a day's rest, a little
quiet and tranquillity, would do him good. He
had got up at his usual hour, and was down
to breakfast, and read his paper, and everything
went on in its ordinary way; but yet he was in-
disposed and a day's rest would do him good.
Young John assented heartily, and was very
willing to take his father's place for the day and
manage all his business. It was a bright morn-
ing, and the room was full of flowers, and the
young leaves fluttered at the windows in the
earliest green of spring. It was exhilarating to
stand in the great recesses of the windows and
look out upon the park, all green and budding,
and think it was all yours and your children's
a sort of feeling which had little effect upon
the young people, but was sweet yet overwhelm-
ing to their father as he stood and looked out in
the quiet of the morning. All his all theirs;
yet perhaps

66

I don't think I shall go down to-day," he said. "You can tell Wrinkell to send me up the papers in the Wardell case. He knows what I want. He can send the-the new clerk up with them-Powys I mean."

"Powys? " said Jack.

in conjectures as to the cause of this unexplain
ed partiality "a fellow who is going to the.
bad and all," Jack said to himself; and his feel-
ing was somewhat vindictive, and he did not
feel so sorry as he ought to have done that
Powys was going to the bad. It seemed on the
whole a kind of retribution. Mr. Wrinkell him.
self had been sent for to Brownlows on various
occasions, but it was not an honour that had
been accorded to any of the clerks; and now
this young fellow, whose appearance and conduct
had both begun to be doubtful, was to have the
privilege. Jack did not comprehend it; uneasy
unexpressed suspicions came into his mind, all
utterly wide of the mark, yet not the less un-
comfortable. The mare was a comfort to him
as she went off in one of her long dashes, with-
out ever talking breath, like an arrow down the
avenue; and so was the momentary glimpse of
a little face at the window, to which he took off
his hat; but notwithstanding these consolations,
he was irritated and somewhat disturbed. On
account of a cad! He had no right to give such
a title to his father's favourite; but still it must
be allowed that it was a little hard.

"Who is Powys? said Sara when her brother was gone. "And why are you angry, papa? You are cross, you know, and that is not like you. I am afraid you must be ill."

"Cross, am I?" said Mr. Brownlow. "I suppose I am not quite well- I told you I had a bad night."

"Yes but what has Powys to do with it? and who is he?" said Sara, looking into his face.

'Well, yes, Powys, is there any reason why he should not send Powys?" said Mr. Brownlow, peremptorily, feeling hot and conscious, and ready to take offence. Then various possibilities rushed into her fathNo, certainly," said Jack, with some sur-er's mind; should he tell her what he was prise. He did not take to Powys, that was un-going to ask of her? Should he claim her promquestionable; yet the chances are he would never have remarked upon Mr. Brownlow's choice of him but for the curious impatience and peremptoriness in his father's tone.

"I like him," said Mr. Brownlow-"he knows what he has to do, and he does it. I like a man who does that it gives one confidence for the time to come."

"Yes," said Jack. "I never cared for him, sir, as you know. He is not my ideal of a clerk -but that is nothing; only I rather think Wrinkell has changed his opinion lately. The young fellow gets on well enough-but there is a difference. I suppose that sort of extra punctuality and virtue can only last a certain time."

"I daresay these are very fine notions, Jack," said his father; "but I am not quite such an accomplished man of the world, I suppose, as if I had been brought up at Eton. I believe in virtue lasting a long time. You must bear with my old-fashioned prejudices." This Mr. Brownlow said in a way which puzzled Jack, for he was not a man given to sneers.

"Of course, if you take it like that, sir, I have not another word to say," said the young man, and he went away feeling bitterly hostile to Powys, who seemed to be the cause of it all. He said to himself that to be snubbed on account of a clerk was a new experience, and lost himself

ise and hold her to her word?
Should he
make an attempt, the only one possible, to se
cure for himself a confidant and counsellor?
Ah, no! that was out of the question. He might
sully his own honour, but never, never his child's.
And he felt, even with a certain exultation, that
his child would not have yielded to the tempta
tion that she would balk him instead of obey-
ing him, did she know why. He felt this in his
inmost mind, and he was glad. She would do
what he asked her, trusting in him, and in her
it would be a virtue
only his should be the
sin.
"Who is he? he said, with a doubtful smile
which resulted from his own thoughts, and not
from her question. "You will know who he is
before long. I want to be civil to him, Sara
He is not just like any other clerk. I would
bring him, if you would not be shocked-to
lunch ".

"Shocked!" said Sara, with one of her princess airs "I am not a great lady. You are Mr. Brownlow the solicitor, papa-I hope I know my proper place."

"Yes," said John Brownlow; but the words brought an uneasy colour to his face, and confounded him in the midst of his projects. To keep her from being merely Mr. Brownlow the solicitor's daughter, he was going to soil his own

honour and risk her happiness; and yet it was fifty thousand pounds would be equal to as thus that she asserted her condition whenever many millions with a son, whose every prosshe had a chance. He left her as soon as he pect would be changed, whose life would begin could, taking no such advantage of his unusual on a totally different level, if his legitimate inholiday as Sara supposed he would. He left the heritance came to him as it ought: this was all breakfast room-which was so bright, and wander- very distinct and clear. But, on the other hand, ed away into the library, a room which, busy to withdraw that fifty thousand pounds from man as he was, he occupied very seldom. It his own affairs at this moment, would be next was of all the rooms in Brownlows, the one which to ruin to John Brownlow. It would be a loss had most appearance of having been made by a to him of almost as much more. It would renew proprietor. There were books in it, to be duce him again hopelessly to the character of sure, which had belonged to the Brownlows, the country solicitor- a character which he had the solicitors, for generations; but these were not abandoned, which he had, in short, rather not half or quarter part enough to fill the room, prided himself in keeping up, but which was which was larger than any two rooms in the very different, in conjunction with his present High Street and consequently it had been ne- standing in the county, from what it would be cessary to fill the vacant space with ranges upon were he Brownlow the solicitor alone. And ranges of literature out of the bookseller's, which then there was the awful question of interest, had not mellowed on the shelves, nor come to which ought to have been accumulating all these belong to them by nature. Mr. Brownlow did five-and-twenty years. He thought to himself, not think of this, but yet he was somehow con- as he reflected, that his best course would have scious of it when, with the prospect of a long been to reject young Powys's application and unoccupied day before him, he went into this throw him off, and leave him to find occupation room. It was on the other side of the house, where he could. Then, if the young man had turned away from the sunshine, and looking out discovered anything, it would at least have been upon nothing but evergreens, sombre corners of a fair fight. But he had of his own will entered shrubberies, and the paths which led to the into relations with him; he had him under his kitchen and stables. He went in and sat down eyes day by day, a standing temptation, a standby the table, and looked round at all the shelves, ing reproach; he had kept him close by him to and drew a blotting-book towards him mechan- make discoveries that otherwise he probably ically. What did he want with it? he had no never would have made; and he had made disletters to write there nothing to do that be- coveries. At any moment the demand might longed to that luxurious leisurely place. If there come which should change the character of the was work to be done, it was at the office that he position altogether. All this was old ground ought to do it. He had not the habit of writing over which he had gone time after time. There here-nor even of reading. The handsome li- was nothing new in it but the sudden remedy brary had nothing to do with his life. This, per- which had occurred to him on the previous. haps, was why he established himself in it on night as he walked home. He had not as yet the special day of which we speak. It seemed confessed to himself that he had accepted that to him as if any moment his fine house might suggestion, and yet only half voluntarily he topple down about his ears like a house of cards. had taken the first step to bring it about. It He had thought over it in the High Street till was a remedy almost as bad as the original he was sick and his head swam; perhaps some danger very unpalatable, very mortifying new light might fall on the subject if he were By mo to think of it here. This was why he estab-ments, Mr. Brownlow's heart revolted altogethlished himself at the table, making in his leisure er against it. It was selling his child, even a pretence to himself of having something to though it was for her own sake-it was taking do. If he had been used to any sort of guile or advantage of her best instincts, of her rash girl dishonourable dealing, the chances are it would ish readiness to put her future in his hands.. have been easier for him; but it is hard upon a And there were also other questions involved. man to change the habits of his life. John When it came to the point, would Sara hold, by Brownlow had to maintain with himself a fight her promise-had she meant it, in carnest, as harder than that which a man ordinarily has to a real promise when she made it? And then. fight against temptation; for the fact was that she was a girl who would do anything, everythis was far, very far from being his case. He thing for her father's sake, in the way of was not tempted to do wrong. It was the good self-sacrifice, but would she understand sacrifiimpulse which in his mind had come to be the cing herself to save, not her father, but Brownthing to be struggled against. What he wanted lows? All these were very doubtful questions. was to do what was right; but with all the Mr. Brownlow, who had never before been in steadiness of a virtuous resolution he had set anybody's power, who knew nothing about himself to struggle against his impulse and to mysteries, found himself now, as it were, in everybody's power, threading a darkling way, from which his own efforts could never deliver him. He was in the power of young Powys, who any day could come to his door and demand- how much? any sum almost his whole fortunewith no alternative but that of a lawsuit, which 144.

do wrong.

Here was the state of the case: He had found, as he undoubtedly believed, the woman whom more than twenty years ago he had given himself so much trouble to find. She was here, a poor woman to whom old Mrs. Thomson's

FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. V.

but it was better than utter downfall.