Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/146

136[January 9, 1869] Lord and Saviour, 'for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,' and she is in the Kingdom of Heaven, where I hope to be."

The old man was going to be pathetic, so I suppose I must have put a sudden question to him, for he said, rather sharply for so very mild and meek, and utterly down-trodden and worn-out a person, "Have I no dislike in eating the bread of the parish? Well, I can't say I have. I would rather eat it at our cottage, and have an allowance to live with one of my sons. And the 'skilligalee' is wretched poor stuff, and I don't like the house rules, and would like to get out oftener than I do; but still right is right, and the parish owes me my bread. I've toiled in it all my life: and after all, though I'm a pauper, I'm a man, and not a dog to be turned out to die in a ditch. And then you see, God is just. I've had a bad time of it in this world, and I'll have my good time of it in the next."

The reader will see that there was a good deal of stolid endurance in Mr. Plant, but very little pluck, energy, or spirit. There was good material in him that had never been worked up to any good end; material that, under more favourable circumstances, say in the prairies of America, where labour is scarce, the soil fruitful, and farms to be easily obtained by the poorest of squatters, might have been so manipulated as to have converted this patient and hopeless serf into a lively, active, and prosperous citizen. Though England may be over-peopled by thoughtless and improvident labourers of the lowest class, like poor Plant, the world is not overpeopled by any means; and how to bring the Plants to the soil that cannot come to the Plants is the problem. Before any satisfactory solution is likely to be obtained, the Plants are likely to go on breeding, toiling, and suffering for centuries to come, as they have done for centuries past. The more's the pity!

up in the thin blue air, on black floating wings, the crow skims over the grey stone cottages of Berkshire, dropped down, as Tom Brown truly says, in odd nooks and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes, and primeval footpaths. The bird skims over snug thatched roofs and little gardens, ill-made roads, and great pasture-lands dotted here and there with clumps of thorns. Passing over the broad green playing-fields of Eton, where the noble elm-trees sentinel the river, the crow, regarding the Eton boys below with benign approval as the future hope of England, takes the playing-fields as the text for a pleasant school-boy anecdote of 1809 still extant. One morning Shelley, the poet, then an Eton boy, roused to indignation by an enemy's taunts, tossed his long angelic locks, and accepted wager of battle from his foe of the playground: Sir Thomas Styles, a plucky little urchin, far younger and shorter than himself. They were to meet at twelve the same day. The coming battle was the whispered talk of every one, and as soon as the rush out of school took place the ring was formed, the seconds and bottleholders were chosen. The tall lean poet towered high above the little thickset baronet. In the first round, Sir Thomas felt his way by speculative sparring, while Shelley tossed his long arms in an incoherent manner. When they rested, the baronet sat quietly on the knee of his second; but Shelley, disdainful of such succour, and confident of victory, stalked round the ring and scowled at his adversary. Time was called, and the battle began in earnest. The baronet planted a cautious blow on Shelley's chest. The poet was shaken, but went in and knocked his little adversary down. While he lay there half stunned, Shelley spouted Homeric defiances, to the delight of his audience. In the second and last round Styles, however, began to wake up, and eventually delivered a settling "slogger" on Shelley's "bread-basket." It fell on the poet like a thunderbolt; his nervous sensibilities were roused; he broke through the ring and flew, pursued by his seconds and backers, but distanced them all, and got to earth safely at the house of his tutor, Mr. Bethell, whom he soon afterwards nearly blew up with a miniature steam-engine which a travelling tinker had manufactured for him.

It was just beyond Datchet Mead, where Falstaff was quoited into the Thames, "like a horseshoe hissing hot," that old tradition says Izaak Walton used to come from his Fleet-street shop to meet Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton, looking for little trout; worthy old men, full of years, and wise yet kindly knowledge of the world, they used to sit here, watching their bobbing floats, baiting hooks, and capping verses, believing that "angling, after serious study, was a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirit, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, and begetting habits of patience and peace." Well might Wotton repeat his own verses here by the river side:

Years afterwards, swarthy Charles the Second and his laughing ladies used to fish here. Pope describes the king,

and