The Warden

CHAPTER XV Tom Towers, Dr Anticant, and Mr Sentiment

‘Ah, Bold! how are you? You haven’t break­fast­ed?’

‘Oh yes, hours ago. And how are you?’

When one Es­quimau meets an­oth­er, do the two, as an in­vari­able rule, ask af­ter each oth­er’s health? is it in­her­ent in all hu­man na­ture to make this oblig­ing in­quiry? Did any read­er of this tale ev­er meet any friend or ac­quain­tance with­out ask­ing some such ques­tion, and did any­one ev­er lis­ten to the re­ply? Some­times a stu­dious­ly cour­te­ous ques­tion­er will show so much thought in the mat­ter as to an­swer it him­self, by declar­ing that had he looked at you he needn’t have asked; mean­ing there­by to sig­ni­fy that you are an ab­so­lute per­son­ifi­ca­tion of health: but such per­sons are on­ly those who pre­med­itate small ef­fects.

‘I sup­pose you’re busy?’ in­quired Bold.

‘Why, yes, rather; or I should say rather not. I have a leisure hour in the day, this is it.’

‘I want to ask you if you can oblige me in a cer­tain mat­ter.’

Tow­ers un­der­stood in a mo­ment, from the tone of his friend’s voice, that the cer­tain mat­ter re­ferred to the news­pa­per. He smiled, and nod­ded his head, but made no promise.

‘You know this law­suit that I’ve been en­gaged in,’ said Bold.

Tom Tow­ers in­ti­mat­ed that he was aware of the ac­tion which was pend­ing about the hos­pi­tal.

‘Well, I’ve aban­doned it.’

Tom Tow­ers mere­ly raised his eye­brows, thrust his hands in­to his trowsers pock­ets, and wait­ed for his friend to pro­ceed.

‘Yes, I’ve giv­en it up. I needn’t trou­ble you with all the his­to­ry; but the fact is that the con­duct of Mr Hard­ing– Mr Hard­ing is the–’

‘Oh yes, the mas­ter of the place; the man who takes all the mon­ey and does noth­ing,’ said Tom Tow­ers, in­ter­rupt­ing him.

‘Well, I don’t know about that; but his con­duct in the mat­ter has been so ex­cel­lent, so lit­tle self­ish, so open, that I can­not pro­ceed in the mat­ter to his detri­ment.’ Bold’s heart mis­gave him as to Eleanor as he said this; and yet he felt that what he said was not un­true. ‘I think noth­ing should now be done till the war­den­ship be va­cant.’

‘And be again filled,’ said Tow­ers, ‘as it cer­tain­ly would, be­fore any­one heard of the va­can­cy; and the same ob­jec­tion would again ex­ist. It’s an old sto­ry that of the vest­ed rights of the in­cum­bent; but sup­pose the in­cum­bent has on­ly a vest­ed wrong, and that the poor of the town have a vest­ed right, if they on­ly knew how to get at it: is not that some­thing the case here?’

Bold couldn’t de­ny it, but thought it was one of those cas­es which re­quired a good deal of man­age­ment be­fore any re­al good could be done. It was a pity that he had not con­sid­ered this be­fore he crept in­to the li­on’s mouth, in the shape of an at­tor­ney’s of­fice.

‘It will cost you a good deal, I fear,’ said Tow­ers.

‘A few hun­dreds,’ said Bold–’per­haps three hun­dred; I can’t help that, and am pre­pared for it.’

‘That’s philo­soph­ical. It’s quite re­fresh­ing to hear a man talk­ing of his hun­dreds in so pure­ly in­dif­fer­ent a man­ner. But I’m sor­ry you are giv­ing the mat­ter up. It in­jures a man to com­mence a thing of this kind, and not car­ry it through. Have you seen that?’ and he threw a small pam­phlet across the ta­ble, which was all but damp from the press.

Bold had not seen it nor heard of it; but he was well ac­quaint­ed with the au­thor of it–a gen­tle­man whose pam­phlets, con­dem­na­to­ry of all things in these mod­ern days, had been a good deal talked about of late.

Dr Pes­simist An­ti­cant was a Scotch­man, who had passed a great por­tion of his ear­ly days in Ger­many; he had stud­ied there with much ef­fect, and had learnt to look with Ger­man sub­tilty in­to the root of things, and to ex­am­ine for him­self their in­trin­sic worth and worth­less­ness. No man ev­er re­solved more brave­ly than he to ac­cept as good noth­ing that was evil; to ban­ish from him as evil noth­ing that was good. ‘Tis a pity that he should not have recog­nised the fact, that in this world no good is un­al­loyed, and that there is but lit­tle evil that has not in it some seed of what is good­ly.

Re­turn­ing from Ger­many, he had as­ton­ished the read­ing pub­lic by the vigour of his thoughts, put forth in the quain­test lan­guage. He can­not write En­glish, said the crit­ics. No mat­ter, said the pub­lic; we can read what he does write, and that with­out yawn­ing. And so Dr Pes­simist An­ti­cant be­came Pop­ular. Pop­ular­ity spoilt him for all fur­ther re­al use, as it has done many an­oth­er. While, with some dif­fi­dence, he con­fined his ob­jur­ga­tions to the oc­ca­sion­al fol­lies or short­com­ings of mankind; while he ridiculed the en­er­gy of the squire de­vot­ed to the slaugh­ter of par­tridges, or the mis­take of some no­ble pa­tron who turned a po­et in­to a gauger of beer- bar­rels, it was all well; we were glad to be told our faults and to look for­ward to the com­ing mil­len­ni­um, when all men, hav­ing suf­fi­cient­ly stud­ied the works of Dr An­ti­cant, would be­come truth­ful and en­er­get­ic. But the doc­tor mis­took the signs of the times and the minds of men, in­sti­tut­ed him­self cen­sor of things in gen­er­al, and be­gan the great task of repro­bat­ing ev­ery­thing and ev­ery­body, with­out fur­ther promise of any mil­len­ni­um at all. This was not so well; and, to tell the truth, our au­thor did not suc­ceed in his un­der­tak­ing. His the­ories were all beau­ti­ful, and the code of morals that he taught us cer­tain­ly an im­prove­ment on the prac­tices of the age. We all of us could, and many of us did, learn much from the doc­tor while he chose to re­main vague, mys­te­ri­ous, and cloudy: but when he be­came prac­ti­cal, the charm was gone.

His al­lu­sion to the po­et and the par­tridges was re­ceived very well. ‘Oh, my poor broth­er,’ said he, ’slaugh­tered par­tridges a score of brace to each gun, and po­ets gaug­ing ale- bar­rels, with six­ty pounds a year, at Dum­fries, are not the signs of a great era!–per­haps of the small­est pos­si­ble era yet writ­ten of. What­ev­er economies we pur­sue, po­lit­ical or oth­er, let us see at once that this is the mad­dest of the un­eco­nom­ic: par­tridges killed by our land mag­nates at, shall we say, a guinea a head, to be re­tailed in Lead­en­hall at one shilling and ninepence, with one poach­er in lim­bo for ev­ery fifty birds! our po­et, mak­er, cre­ator, gaug­ing ale, and that bad­ly, with no leisure for mak­ing or cre­at­ing, on­ly a lit­tle leisure for drink­ing, and such like beer-​bar­rel av­oca­tions! Tru­ly, a cut­ting of blocks with fine ra­zors while we scrape our chins so un­com­fort­ably with rusty knives! Oh, my po­lit­ical economist, mas­ter of sup­ply and de­mand, di­vi­sion of labour and high pres­sure–oh, my loud-​speak­ing friend, tell me, if so much be in you, what is the de­mand for po­ets in these king­doms of Queen Vic­to­ria, and what the vouch­safed sup­ply?’

This was all very well: this gave us some hope. We might do bet­ter with our next po­et, when we got one; and though the par­tridges might not be aban­doned, some­thing could per­haps be done as to the poach­ers. We were un­will­ing, how­ev­er, to take lessons in pol­itics from so misty a pro­fes­sor; and when he came to tell us that the heroes of West­min­ster were naught, we be­gan to think that he had writ­ten enough. His at­tack up­on despatch box­es was not thought to have much in it; but as it is short, the doc­tor shall again be al­lowed to speak his sen­ti­ments.

‘Could ut­most in­ge­nu­ity in the man­age­ment of red tape avail any­thing to men ly­ing gasp­ing–we may say, all but dead; could despatch box­es with nev­er-​so-​much vel­vet lin­ing and Chubb’s patent be of com­fort to a peo­ple in ex­tremes, I al­so, with so many oth­ers, would, with parched tongue, call on the name of Lord John Rus­sell; or, my broth­er, at your ad­vice, on Lord Ab­erdeen; or, my cousin, on Lord Der­by, at yours; be­ing, with my parched tongue, in­dif­fer­ent to such mat­ters. ‘Tis all one. Oh, Der­by! Oh, Glad­stone! Oh, Palmer­ston! Oh, Lord John! Each comes run­ning with serene face and despatch box. Vain physi­cians! though there were hosts of such, no despatch box will cure this dis­or­der! What! are there oth­er doc­tors’ new names, dis­ci­ples who have not bur­dened their souls with tape? Well, let us call again. Oh, Dis­raeli, great op­po­si­tion­ist, man of the bit­ter brow! or, Oh, Molesworth, great re­former, thou who promis­est Utopia. They come; each with that serene face, and each–alas, me! alas, my coun­try!–each with a despatch box!

‘Oh, the seren­ity of Down­ing Street!

‘My broth­ers, when hope was over on the bat­tle-​field, when no dimmest chance of vic­to­ry re­mained, the an­cient Ro­man could hide his face with­in his to­ga, and die grace­ful­ly. Can you and I do so now? If so, ’twere best for us; if not, oh my broth­ers, we must die dis­grace­ful­ly, for hope of life and vic­to­ry I see none left to us in this world be­low. I for one can­not trust much to serene face and despatch box!’

There might be truth in this, there might be depth of rea­son­ing; but En­glish­men did not see enough in the ar­gu­ment to in­duce them to with­draw their con­fi­dence from the present ar­range­ments of the gov­ern­ment, and Dr An­ti­cant’s month­ly pam­phlet on the de­cay of the world did not re­ceive so much at­ten­tion as his ear­li­er works. He did not con­fine him­self to pol­itics in these pub­li­ca­tions, but roamed at large over all mat­ters of pub­lic in­ter­est, and found ev­ery­thing bad. Ac­cord­ing to him no­body was true, and not on­ly no­body, but noth­ing; a man could not take off his hat to a la­dy with­out telling a lie–the la­dy would lie again in smil­ing. The ruf­fles of the gen­tle­man’s shirt would be fraught with de­ceit, and the la­dy’s flounces full of false­hood. Was ev­er any­thing more se­vere than that at­tack of his on chip bon­nets, or the anath­emas with which he en­deav­oured to dust the pow­der out of the bish­ops’ wigs?

The pam­phlet which Tom Tow­ers now pushed across the ta­ble was en­ti­tled Mod­ern Char­ity, and was writ­ten with the view of prov­ing how much in the way of char­ity was done by our pre­de­ces­sors–how lit­tle by the present age; and it end­ed by a com­par­ison be­tween an­cient and mod­ern times, very lit­tle to the cred­it of the lat­ter.

‘Look at this,’ said Tow­ers, get­ting up and turn­ing over the pages of the pam­phlet, and point­ing to a pas­sage near the end. ‘Your friend the war­den, who is so lit­tle self­ish, won’t like that, I fear.’ Bold read as fol­lows–

‘Heav­ens, what a sight! Let us with eyes wide open see the god­ly man of four cen­turies since, the man of the dark ages; let us see how he does his god­like work, and, again, how the god­ly man of these lat­ter days does his.

‘Shall we say that the for­mer is one walk­ing painful­ly through the world, re­gard­ing, as a pru­dent man, his world­ly work, pros­per­ing in it as a dili­gent man will pros­per, but al­ways with an eye to that bet­ter trea­sure to which thieves do not creep in? Is there not much no­bil­ity in that old man, as, lean­ing on his oak­en staff, he walks down the High Street of his na­tive town, and re­ceives from all cour­te­ous salu­ta­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of his worth? A no­ble old man, my au­gust in­hab­itants of Bel­grave Square and such like vicin­ity–a very no­ble old man, though em­ployed no bet­ter than in the whole­sale card­ing of wool.

‘This card­ing of wool, how­ev­er, did in those days bring with it much prof­it, so that our an­cient friend, when dy­ing, was de­clared, in what­ev­er slang then pre­vailed, to cut up ex­ceed­ing well. For sons and daugh­ters there was am­ple sus­te­nance with as­sis­tance of due in­dus­try; for friends and rel­atives some re­lief for grief at this great loss; for aged de­pen­dents com­fort in de­clin­ing years. This was much for one old man to get done in that dark fif­teenth cen­tu­ry. But this was not all: com­ing gen­er­ations of poor wool-​carders should bless the name of this rich one; and a hos­pi­tal should be found­ed and en­dowed with his wealth for the feed­ing of such of the trade as could not, by dili­gent card­ing, any longer du­ly feed them­selves.

”Twas thus that an old man in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry did his god­like work to the best of his pow­er, and not ig­nobly, as ap­pears to me.

‘We will now take our god­ly man of lat­ter days. He shall no longer be a wool-​carder, for such are not now men of mark. We will sup­pose him to be one of the best of the good, one who has lacked no op­por­tu­ni­ties. Our old friend was, af­ter all, but il­lit­er­ate; our mod­ern friend shall be a man ed­ucat­ed in all seem­ly knowl­edge; he shall, in short, be that blessed be­ing– a cler­gy­man of the Church of Eng­land!

‘And now, in what per­fectest man­ner does he in this low­er world get his god­like work done and put out of hand? Heav­ens! in the strangest of man­ners. Oh, my broth­er! in a man­ner not at all to be be­lieved, but by the most minute tes­ti­mo­ny of eye­sight. He does it by the mag­ni­tude of his ap­petite–by the pow­er of his gorge; his on­ly oc­cu­pa­tion is to swal­low the bread pre­pared with so much anx­ious care for these im­pov­er­ished carders of wool–that, and to sing in­dif­fer­ent­ly through his nose once in the week some psalm more or less long–the short­er the bet­ter, we should be in­clined to say.

‘Oh, my civilised friends!–great Britons that nev­er will be slaves, men ad­vanced to in­fi­nite state of free­dom and knowl­edge of good and evil–tell me, will you, what be­com­ing mon­ument you will erect to an high­ly-​ed­ucat­ed cler­gy­man of the Church of Eng­land?’

Bold cer­tain­ly thought that his friend would not like that: he could not con­ceive any­thing that he would like less than this. To what a world of toil and trou­ble had he, Bold, giv­en rise by his in­dis­creet at­tack up­on the hos­pi­tal!

‘You see,’ said Tow­ers, ‘that this af­fair has been much talked of, and the pub­lic are with you. I am sor­ry you should give the mat­ter up. Have you seen the first num­ber of The Almshouse?’

No; Bold had not seen The Almshouse. He had seen ad­ver­tise­ments of Mr Pop­ular Sen­ti­ment’s new nov­el of that name, but had in no way con­nect­ed it with Barch­ester Hos­pi­tal, and had nev­er thought a mo­ment on the sub­ject.

‘It’s a di­rect at­tack on the whole sys­tem,’ said Tow­ers. ‘It’ll go a long way to put down Rochester, and Barch­ester, and Dul­wich, and St Cross, and all such hotbeds of pec­ula­tion. It’s very clear that Sen­ti­ment has been down to Barch­ester, and got up the whole sto­ry there; in­deed, I thought he must have had it all from you, it’s very well done, as you’ll see: his first num­bers al­ways are.’

Bold de­clared that Mr Sen­ti­ment had got noth­ing from him, and that he was deeply grieved to find that the case had be­come so no­to­ri­ous.

‘The fire has gone too far to be quenched,’ said Tow­ers; ‘the build­ing must go now; and as the tim­bers are all rot­ten, why, I should be in­clined to say, the soon­er the bet­ter. I ex­pect­ed to see you get some eclat in the mat­ter.’

This was all worm­wood to Bold. He had done enough to make his friend the war­den mis­er­able for life, and had then backed out just when the suc­cess of his project was suf­fi­cient to make the ques­tion one of re­al in­ter­est. How weak­ly he had man­aged his busi­ness! he had al­ready done the harm, and then stayed his hand when the good which he had in view was to be com­menced. How de­light­ful would it have been to have em­ployed all his en­er­gy in such a cause–to have been backed by The Jupiter, and writ­ten up to by two of the most pop­ular au­thors of the day! The idea opened a view in­to the very world in which he wished to live. To what might it not have giv­en rise? what de­light­ful in­ti­ma­cies–what pub­lic praise– to what Athe­ni­an ban­quets and rich flavour of At­tic salt?

This, how­ev­er, was now past hope. He had pledged him­self to aban­don the cause; and could he have for­got­ten the pledge he had gone too far to re­treat. He was now, this mo­ment, sit­ting in Tom Tow­ers’ room with the ob­ject of dep­re­cat­ing any fur­ther ar­ti­cles in The Jupiter, and, great­ly as he dis­liked the job, his pe­ti­tion to that ef­fect must be made.

‘I couldn’t con­tin­ue it,’ said he, ‘be­cause I found I was in the wrong.’

Tom Tow­ers shrugged his shoul­ders. How could a suc­cess­ful man be in the wrong! ‘In that case,’ said he, ‘of course you must aban­don it.’

‘And I called this morn­ing to ask you al­so to aban­don it,’ said Bold.

‘To ask me,’ said Tom Tow­ers, with the most placid of smiles, and a con­sum­mate look of gen­tle sur­prise, as though Tom Tow­ers was well aware that he of all men was the last to med­dle in such mat­ters.

‘Yes,’ said Bold, al­most trem­bling with hes­ita­tion. ‘The Jupiter, you know, has tak­en the mat­ter up very strong­ly. Mr Hard­ing has felt what it has said deeply; and I thought that if I could ex­plain to you that he per­son­al­ly has not been to blame, these ar­ti­cles might be dis­con­tin­ued.’

How calm­ly im­pas­sive was Tom Tow­ers’ face, as this in­no­cent lit­tle propo­si­tion was made! Had Bold ad­dressed him­self to the door­posts in Mount Olym­pus, they would have shown as much out­ward sign of as­sent or dis­sent. His qui­es­cence was quite ad­mirable; his dis­cre­tion cer­tain­ly more than hu­man.

‘My dear fel­low,’ said he, when Bold had quite done speak­ing, ‘I re­al­ly can­not an­swer for The Jupiter.’

‘But if you saw that these ar­ti­cles were un­just, I think that You Would en­deav­our to put a stop to them. Of course no­body doubts that you could, if you chose.’

‘No­body and ev­ery­body are al­ways very kind, but un­for­tu­nate­ly are gen­er­al­ly very wrong.’

‘Come, come, Tow­ers,’ said Bold, pluck­ing up his courage, and re­mem­ber­ing that for Eleanor’s sake he was bound to make his best ex­er­tion; ‘I have no doubt in my own mind but that you wrote the ar­ti­cles your­self, and very well writ­ten they were: it will be a great favour if you will in fu­ture ab­stain from any per­son­al al­lu­sion to poor Hard­ing.’

‘My dear Bold,’ said Tom Tow­ers, ‘I have a sin­cere re­gard for you. I have known you for many years, and val­ue your friend­ship; I hope you will let me ex­plain to you, with­out of­fence, that none who are con­nect­ed with the pub­lic press can with pro­pri­ety lis­ten to in­ter­fer­ence.’

‘In­ter­fer­ence!’ said Bold, ‘I don’t want to in­ter­fere.’

‘Ah, but, my dear fel­low, you do; what else is it? You think that I am able to keep cer­tain re­marks out of a news­pa­per. Your in­for­ma­tion is prob­ably in­cor­rect, as most pub­lic gos­sip on such sub­jects is; but, at any rate, you think I have such pow­er, and you ask me to use it: now that is in­ter­fer­ence.’

‘Well, if you choose to call it so.’

‘And now sup­pose for a mo­ment that I had this pow­er, and used it as you wish: isn’t it clear that it would be a great abuse? Cer­tain men are em­ployed in writ­ing for the pub­lic press; and if they are in­duced ei­ther to write or to ab­stain from writ­ing by pri­vate mo­tives, sure­ly the pub­lic press would soon be of lit­tle val­ue. Look at the recog­nised worth of dif­fer­ent news­pa­pers, and see if it does not main­ly de­pend on the as­sur­ance which the pub­lic feel that such a pa­per is, or is not, in­de­pen­dent. You al­lud­ed to The Jupiter: sure­ly you can­not but see that the weight of The Jupiter is too great to be moved by any pri­vate re­quest, even though it should be made to a much more in­flu­en­tial per­son than my­self: you’ve on­ly to think of this, and you’ll see that I am right.’

The dis­cre­tion of Tom Tow­ers was bound­less: there was no con­tra­dict­ing what he said, no ar­gu­ing against such propo­si­tions. He took such high ground that there was no get­ting on it. ‘The pub­lic is de­fraud­ed,’ said he, ‘when­ev­er pri­vate con­sid­er­ations are al­lowed to have weight.’ Quite true, thou great­est or­acle of the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, thou sen­ten­tious pro­claimer of the pu­ri­ty of the press–the pub­lic is de­fraud­ed when it is pur­pose­ly mis­led. Poor pub­lic! how of­ten is it mis­led! against what a world of fraud has it to con­tend!

Bold took his leave, and got out of the room as quick­ly as he could, in­ward­ly de­nounc­ing his friend Tom Tow­ers as a prig and a hum­bug. ‘I know he wrote those ar­ti­cles,’ said Bold to him­self. ‘I know he got his in­for­ma­tion from me. He was ready enough to take my word for gospel when it suit­ed his own views, and to set Mr Hard­ing up be­fore the pub­lic as an im­pos­tor on no oth­er tes­ti­mo­ny than my chance con­ver­sa­tion; but when I of­fer him re­al ev­idence op­posed to his own views, he tells me that pri­vate mo­tives are detri­men­tal to pub­lic jus­tice! Con­found his ar­ro­gance! What is any pub­lic ques­tion but a con­glom­er­ation of pri­vate in­ter­ests? What is any news­pa­per ar­ti­cle but an ex­pres­sion of the views tak­en by one side? Truth! it takes an age to as­cer­tain the truth of any ques­tion! The idea of Tom Tow­ers talk­ing of pub­lic mo­tives and pu­ri­ty of pur­pose! Why, it wouldn’t give him a mo­ment’s un­easi­ness to change his pol­itics to­mor­row, if the pa­per re­quired it.’

Such were John Bold’s in­ward ex­cla­ma­tions as he made his way out of the qui­et labyrinth of the Tem­ple; and yet there was no po­si­tion of world­ly pow­er so cov­et­ed in Bold’s am­bi­tion as that held by the man of whom he was think­ing. It was the im­preg­nabil­ity of the place which made Bold so an­gry with the pos­ses­sor of it, and it was the same qual­ity which made it ap­pear so de­sir­able.

Pass­ing in­to the Strand, he saw in a book­seller’s win­dow an an­nounce­ment of the first num­ber of The Almshouse; so he pur­chased a copy, and hur­ry­ing back to his lodg­ings, pro­ceed­ed to as­cer­tain what Mr Pop­ular Sen­ti­ment had to say to the pub­lic on the sub­ject which had late­ly oc­cu­pied so much of his own at­ten­tion.

In for­mer times great ob­jects were at­tained by great work. When evils were to be re­formed, re­form­ers set about their heavy task with grave deco­rum and la­bo­ri­ous ar­gu­ment. An age was oc­cu­pied in prov­ing a grievance, and philo­soph­ical re­search­es were print­ed in fo­lio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eter­ni­ty to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quick­er: ridicule is found to be more con­vinc­ing than ar­gu­ment, imag­inary ag­onies touch more than true sor­rows, and month­ly nov­els con­vince, when learned quar­tos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling num­bers.

Of all such re­form­ers Mr Sen­ti­ment is the most pow­er­ful. It is in­cred­ible the num­ber of evil prac­tices he has put down: it is to be feared he will soon lack sub­jects, and that when he has made the work­ing class­es com­fort­able, and got bit­ter beer put in­to prop­er-​sized pint bot­tles, there will be noth­ing fur­ther for him left to do. Mr Sen­ti­ment is cer­tain­ly a very pow­er­ful man, and per­haps not the less so that his good poor peo­ple are so very good; his hard rich peo­ple so very hard; and the gen­uine­ly hon­est so very hon­est. Nam­by-​pam­by in these days is not thrown away if it be in­tro­duced in the prop­er quar­ters. Di­vine peer­ess­es are no longer in­ter­est­ing, though pos­sessed of ev­ery virtue; but a pat­tern peas­ant or an im­mac­ulate man­ufac­tur­ing hero may talk as much twad­dle as one of Mrs Rat­cliffe’s hero­ines, and still be lis­tened to. Per­haps, how­ev­er, Mr Sen­ti­ment’s great at­trac­tion is in his sec­ond-​rate char­ac­ters. If his heroes and hero­ines walk up­on stilts, as heroes and hero­ines, I fear, ev­er must, their at­ten­dant satel­lites are as nat­ural as though one met them in the street: they walk and talk like men and wom­en, and live among our friends a rat­tling, live­ly life; yes, live, and will live till the names of their call­ing shall be for­got­ten in their own, and Buck­ett and Mrs Gamp will be the on­ly words left to us to sig­ni­fy a de­tec­tive po­lice of­fi­cer or a month­ly nurse.

The Almshouse opened with a scene in a cler­gy­man’s house. Ev­ery lux­ury to be pur­chased by wealth was de­scribed as be­ing there: all the ap­pear­ances of house­hold in­dul­gence gen­er­al­ly found amongst the most self-​in­dul­gent of the rich were crowd­ed in­to this abode. Here the read­er was in­tro­duced to the de­mon of the book, the Mephistophe­les of the dra­ma. What sto­ry was ev­er writ­ten with­out a de­mon? What nov­el, what his­to­ry, what work of any sort, what world, would be per­fect with­out ex­ist­ing prin­ci­ples both of good and evil? The de­mon of The Almshouse was the cler­ical own­er of this com­fort­able abode. He was a man well strick­en in years, but still strong to do evil: he was one who looked cru­el­ly out of a hot, pas­sion­ate, blood­shot eye; who had a huge red nose with a car­bun­cle, thick lips, and a great dou­ble, flab­by chin, which swelled out in­to sol­id sub­stance, like a turkey-​cock’s comb, when sud­den anger in­spired him: he had a hot, fur­rowed, low brow, from which a few griz­zled hairs were not yet rubbed off by the fric­tion of his hand­ker­chief: he wore a loose un­starched white hand­ker­chief, black loose ill-​made clothes, and huge loose shoes, adapt­ed to many corns and var­ious bunions: his husky voice told tales of much dai­ly port wine, and his lan­guage was not so deco­rous as be­came a cler­gy­man. Such was the mas­ter of Mr Sen­ti­ment’s Almshouse. He was a wid­ow­er, but at present ac­com­pa­nied by two daugh­ters, and a thin and some­what in­sipid cu­rate. One of the young ladies was de­vot­ed to her fa­ther and the fash­ion­able world, and she of course was the favourite; the oth­er was equal­ly ad­dict­ed to Pusey­ism and the cu­rate.

The sec­ond chap­ter of course in­tro­duced the read­er to the more es­pe­cial in­mates of the hos­pi­tal. Here were dis­cov­ered eight old men; and it was giv­en to be un­der­stood that four va­can­cies re­mained un­filled, through the per­verse ill-​na­ture of the cler­ical gen­tle­man with the dou­ble chin. The state of these eight pau­pers was touch­ing­ly dread­ful: six­pence-​far­thing a day had been suf­fi­cient for their di­et when the almshouse was found­ed; and on six­pence-​far­thing a day were they still doomed to starve, though food was four times as dear, and mon­ey four times as plen­ti­ful. It was shock­ing to find how the con­ver­sa­tion of these eight starved old men in their dor­mi­to­ry shamed that of the cler­gy­man’s fam­ily in his rich draw­ing- room. The ab­so­lute words they ut­tered were not per­haps spo­ken in the purest En­glish, and it might be dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from their di­alect to what part of the coun­try they be­longed; the beau­ty of the sen­ti­ment, how­ev­er, am­ply atoned for the im­per­fec­tion of the lan­guage; and it was re­al­ly a pity that these eight old men could not be sent through the coun­try as moral mis­sion­ar­ies, in­stead of be­ing im­mured and starved in that wretched almshouse.

Bold fin­ished the num­ber; and as he threw it aside, he thought that that at least had no di­rect ap­pli­ance to Mr Hard­ing, and that the ab­surd­ly strong colour­ing of the pic­ture would dis­en­able the work from do­ing ei­ther good or harm. He was wrong. The artist who paints for the mil­lion must use glar­ing colours, as no one knew bet­ter than Mr Sen­ti­ment when he de­scribed the in­hab­itants of his almshouse; and the rad­ical re­form which has now swept over such es­tab­lish­ments has owed more to the twen­ty num­bers of Mr Sen­ti­ment’s nov­el, than to all the true com­plaints which have es­caped from the pub­lic for the last half cen­tu­ry.