Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/477

Charles Dickens] very small measure of gratification. From all these troubles we should at any rate be free. No house-painting would be required auy more. Every time there was a shower of rain the outsides of our places of abode would be washed from top to bottom; or, in default of rain, they could be cleaned with infinite ease by the application of a discharge of water from a small engine.

It ib to be hoped that no one will suppose, that the suggestion hazarded in these lines is put forward with a mauiacal conviction that the whole of London ought suddenly to be rased to the ground, and a new town built up with houses decorated in the manner here advocated. All that it is intended to urge is that, as occasion serves, it might be advisable to try some experiments in connexion with this idea. The building of houses is a process which is 1 going on, in and about London, every day, and all day long, and even supposing that there might be a difficulty in applying tliis system of decoration to houses already built though even this does not seem very impracticable it might still be tried in the case of houses in the course of erection, or yet to be built.

After all the attempt would not be a very rash one; we have as has been said above experience of a successful use of tiles, somewhat analogous to that here proposed, on the walls of certain dairies, and butchers' shops, and the author of this paper has also seen them employed in another way to which he may perhaps be excused for alluding a little more at length introduced, that is, shoulder-high as a sort of facing to the walls of a staircase. These walls had originally been painted, but had got, in a short time, to be quite disfigured with dirt and stains; the house being full of children and servants, who were constantly using the stairs, and bringing hands which (the scene being laid in London), were not always scrupulously clean, into contact with the wall, not to speak of the deteriorating effect produced by the continual bumping against the paint of all those numerous objects which have, in the course of the year to be carried up from below stairs, or brought down from above. The staircase at last under these defiling influences got to look so dirty that the proprietor of the house of which it formed part, determined to try the experiment whether a glazed surface would not defy the contact, both of hands in a doubtful condition as to cleanliness, of the dresses in which the servants did their dirty work, and of all the other polluting influences to which staircase walls are liable, and gave orders that they should incontinently be faced with tiles, to the height of some five feet above the wainscot. Nothing could be more entirely successful than the result. The tiles after a year's contact with doubtful hands, dirty work -dresses, and the rest, remaining perfectly bright and speckless, and showing no indication anywhere of having been touched by any object that was in the slightest degree uncleanly. The surface in short would not receive dirt, or receiving, would not retain it.

Since the above was written, additional corroboration of the theory that glazed tiles arc exceedingly well adapted for purposes of external mural decoration, has come in the writer's way, in the shape of an account of Lisbon, published in a new magazine brought out by the members of the Civil Service, and called Under the Crown. In a description of the Portuguese capital, which appears in the notes referred to, mention is made of the use of glazed tiles as a commonly-used facing to the nouses in Lisbon; and the effect is spoken of as in every way most satisfactory, the bright look of the houses and their extreme cleanliness being especially enlarged on. Here, then, is evidence of the fitness of these tiles for out-door service which is surely of great value, and which might encourage us to try them in our own metropolis, where they would be even more appropriate than in a city like Lisbon, which is so much less subject than London to all sorts of polluting influences. We Londoners should indeed be perhaps with the exception of some of the manufacturing towns the most special gainers of all by such a change as the employment of these tiles would effect. Our town would be clean-looking and cheerful, instead of being, as it is now, foul and dismal in the extreinest degree, and in place of the dark and sooty structures which at present border our streets, we should have rows of bright and comely buildings all about us. In a word, we might rationally hope at least to have pleasant objects to look at as we walked along, instead of unseemly ones a white town to five in in place of a black one a clean town instead of a dirty one.

OLD DICK PURSER.

", a farm labourer, lately died, in the workhouse, aged one hundred and twelve. He worked in the fields within seven years of his decease."—.

, it do seem a power of a time ago

Since old King Garge came here, you know;

But I remember't by this zign [sic]—

That spring the beans were coming on vine.

I was twenty-four on the very day

That the Royal Garge went down, they say;

The admiral's money it still lies there—

'Tis eighty-eight years come next Stroud vair.

We drove to Gloucester a load of corn

That June the Prince of Wales was born;

I couldn't forget it for all squire's wealth—

For they made me drunk a drinking his health.

That year I was courting my little May

Was the year of the fighting in 'Merikay;

'Twas all, as I've hears, about some tax

That government men put on their backs.

I had been married 'bout fifteen year,

When up went bread, and up went beer;

'Twas the Revolootion, as I understood,

The time we was felling Thorley Wood.

They cut off the French king's bead, I heerd—

And many a better, as I'm afeared;

And then came Bony, that terrible Turk,

Just as I'd taken to hedging work.