Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/57

 ''distant land. Save me from harm of soul and body; give me back health and strength, that I may serve Thee more faithfully, and be able to bring others dependent on me to serve Thee also, and add to Thy glories! Amen.''"

Sunday.—How sweet and delicious are the mornings here; what soft airs blow gently from these luxuriant trees and mountains! One really grows fonder of the place every moment. The mornings are the most charming; ever so pastoral, and yet it will seem but the pastoral of the theatre or the opera—sham trees and shepherdesses; and I feel all the time that the corrupting Upas garden spreads its fatal vanities over all. These pretty wells, enchanting walks, innocent flowers, music, lights, trees, ferns, what not—they could hardly be, without this support. The odious and plundering vice keeps up and pays for all, even for the innocent blessings of nature; and I doubt whether one is not accessory before the act to those results in accepting any benefit from so contaminated a source, and lending one's countenance in return to their doings. But this is too much refining, and my pet at home will smile at such scruples. I must not set up to be a saint, and I shall do more practical work if, by word or example, I can save some light and careless soul from the temptation. Some way I seem to myself to be grown a little too virtuous since I came here; but in presence of this awful destroyer it is hard not to be serious.

Another of the baits to purchase the good-will of the decent is the reading room, flooded literally with journals of all climes. Squire John Bull is paid special attention to, by half a dozen of his favourite Times, Pall-Mall, Morning Herald even—though what put that journal in the heads of the administration it would be hard to tell—and the veteran Galignani. But a glass door between the Times and squire, who is stingy at heart, and resents postage, and at the same time having to subscribe to his club at home, where he have all these papers for nothing—British flesh and blood could not stand that; so he and his wife—I knew him at once by his gold glass and complacent air as he reads—come every morning at eleven o'clock, and sit and devour their cheap news till one or two. The greediness and selfishness displayed as to getting papers by those people is inconceivable. I do say there is more of the little mean vices engendered in that room than one could possibly conceive in so small a space. The moment he enters there is the questing eye looking round with suspicion and eagerness until he sees the mainsail of his Times fluttering in another Briton's hand, an old enemy—i.e. one who is a slow reader, and who reads every word. He himself is a slow reader, and reads every word; but that is nothing to the point. A look of dislike and anger spreads over his face; but there is the other copy, also "in hand"—in the hand of a dowager, with glasses also—"that beast of a woman," he tells his wife. The person in whose hands he likes to see his Times is a young "thing," a "chit of a girl," who just skims over a column or two, reads the Court Circular portion, and the account of the latest opera. Indeed, he thinks that she has no business to be reading at all. He prowls about, looking at the owners of other papers, as who should say, "Ugh, you!" Now some one lays down a paper, and he rushes at it, anticipating another cormorant by a second: it is only the old journal, not yesterday's. Then, with eyes of discontent, he goes up to the reader in possession of Times, and says, bitterly, "I'll trouble you when you have done with that;" to which the answer is a grunt. And then he draws a chair close opposite to him, and if glaring can hurry, or restless moving of the chair, or impatient ejaculation, he could not fail. When he does secure it, what a read he has, and how he does take it out of the others! If he could he would have three or four—one to sit on, one lying near him. And yet he is not a bad man, I am sure, at home; but the very atmosphere of this place, perverts everything. Yet the French and Germans in this room take the thing tranquilly. They read their little newspaper quietly and swiftly, with a little faint eagerness to get possession of the Figaro, or some diverting paper; but no one glares at his neighbour. My Dora at home will send me out a paper, so I shall be independent of these rascals and their pitiful bribes.

Two o'clock.—The dogs in the street drawing the little milk carts, harnessed so prettily, and drawing so "willingly." Honest Tray, with his broad jaws well open, and he himself panting from the heat, looks up every now and again to the neat German girl who walks by him. When she wants him to go on, she leads him gently by his great yellow ear, as if it was a bridle. When there are two together they trot on merrily; but the work is too much for the poor paws of a single one. When