murmured he, faintly, “or land of Life, as dark and still – I have passed from one into the other; but which of ye I am now in, seems doubtful to my senses.”
“Here we are, poor gentleman,” cried Peggy, “here we are, all friends about you. How did ’ee tumble into the canal?”
“The Earth, then, once more!” said the stranger, with a deep sigh. “I know where I am, now. I remember this great dark hill of ashes – like Death’s kingdom, full of all sorts of strange things, and put to many uses.”
“Where do you live?” asked old Doubleyear; “shall we try and take you home, sir?”
The stranger shook his head mournfully. All this time, little Jem had been assiduously employed in rubbing his feet and then his hands; in doing which the piece of dirty parchment, with the miniature-frame, dropped out of his breast-pocket. A good thought instantly struck Peggy.
“Run, Jemmy dear – run with that golden thing to Mr. Spikechin, the pawnbroker’s – get something upon it directly, and buy some nice brandy – and some Godfrey’s cordial – and a blanket, Jemmy – and call a coach, and get up outside on it, and make the coachee drive back here as fast as you can.”
But before Jemmy could attend to this, Mr. Waterhouse, the stranger whose life they had preserved, raised himself on one elbow, and extended his hand to the miniature-frame. Directly he looked at it, he raised himself higher up – turned it about once or twice – then caught up the piece of parchment; and uttering an ejaculation, which no one could have distinguished either as of joy or of pain, sank back fainting.
In brief, this parchment was a portion of the title-deeds he had lost; and though it did not prove sufficient to enable him to recover his fortune, it brought his opponent to a composition, which gave him an annuity for life. Small as this was, he determined that these poor people, who had so generously saved his life at the risk of their own, should be sharers in it. Finding that what they most desired was to have a cottage in the neighborhood of the dust-heap, built large enough for all three to live together, and keep a cow, Mr. Waterhouse paid a visit to Manchester-square, where the owner of the property resided. He told his story, as far as was needful, and proposed to purchase the field in question.
The great dust-contractor was much amused, and his daughter – a very accomplished young lady – was extremely interested. So the matter was speedily arranged to the satisfaction and pleasure of all parties. The acquaintance, however, did not end here. Mr. Waterhouse renewed his visits very frequently, and finally made proposals for the young lady’s hand, she having already expressed her hopes of a propitious answer from her father.
“Well, sir,” said the latter, “you wish to marry my daughter, and she wishes to marry you. You are a gentleman and a scholar, but you have no money. My daughter is what you see, and she has no money. But I have; and therefore, as she likes you, and I like you, I’ll make you both an offer. I will give my daughter twenty thousand pounds – or you shall have the dust-heap. Choose!”
Mr. Waterhouse was puzzled and amused, and referred the matter entirely to the young lady. But she was for having the money, and no trouble. She said the dust-heap might be worth much, but they did not understand the business. “Very well,” said her father, laughing, “then there’s the money.”
This was the identical dust-heap, as we know from authentic information, which was subsequently sold for forty thousand pounds, and was exported to Russia to rebuild Moscow.
THE OLD SQUIRE
The old squire, or, in other words, the squire of the old school, is the eldest born of John Bull; he is the “very moral of him;” as like him as pea to pea. He has a tolerable share of his good qualities; and as for his prejudices – oh, they are his meat and drink, and the very clothes he wears. He is made up of prejudices – he is covered all over with them. They are the staple of his dreams; they garnish his dishes, they spice his cup, they enter into his very prayers, and they make his will altogether. His oaks and elms in his park, and in his woods – they are sturdy timbers, in troth, and gnarled and knotted to some purpose, for they have stood for centuries; but what are they to the towering upshoots of his prejudices? Oh, they are mere wands! If he has not stood for centuries, his prejudices have; for they have come down from generation to generation with the family and the estate. They have ridden, to use another figure, like the Old Man of the Sea, on the shoulders of his ancestors, and have skipped from those of one ancestor to those of the next; and there they sit on his own most venerable, well-fed, comfortable, ancient, and gray-eyed prejudices, as familiar to their seat as the collar of his coat. He would take cold without them; to part with them would be the death of him. So! don’t go too near – don’t let us alarm them; for, in truth, they have had insults, and met with impertinences of late years, and have grown fretful and cantankerous in their old age. Nay, horrid radicals have not hesitated, in this wicked generation, to aim sundry deadly blows at them; and it has been all that the old squire has been able to do to protect them. Then —
You need not rub them backwards like a cat,
If you would see them spirt and sparkle up.
You have only to give one look at them, and they will appear to all in bristles and fury, like a nest of porcupines.
The old squire, like his father, is a sincere lover and a most hearty hater. What does he love? Oh, he loves the country – ’tis the only country on the earth that is worth calling a country; and he loves the constitution. But don’t ask him what it is, unless you want to test the hardness of his walking-stick; it is the constitution, the finest thing in the world, and all the better for being, like the Athanasian creed, a mystery. Of what use is it that the mob should understand it? It is our glorious constitution – that is enough. Are you not contented to feel how good it is, without going to peer into its very entrails, and perhaps ruin it, like an ignorant fellow putting his hand into the works of a clock? Are you not contented to let the sun shine on you? Do you want to go up and see what it is made of? Well, then, it is the constitution – the finest thing in the world; and, good as the country is, it would be good for nothing without it, no more than a hare would without stuffing, or a lantern without a candle, or the church without the steeple or the ring of bells. Well, he loves the constitution, as he ought to do; for has it not done well for him and his forefathers? And has it not kept the mob in their places, spite of the French Revolution? And taken care of the National Debt? And has it not taught us all to “fear God and honor the king;” and given the family estate to him, the church to his brother Ned, and put Fred and George into the army and navy? Could there possibly be a better constitution, if the Whigs could but let it alone with their Reform Bills? And, therefore, as he most reasonably loves the dear, old, mysterious, and benevolent constitution to distraction, and places it in the region of his veneration somewhere in the seventh heaven itself, so he hates every body and thing that hates it.
He hates Frenchmen because he loves his country, and thinks we are dreadfully degenerated that we do not nowadays find some cause, as the wisdom of our ancestors did, to pick a quarrel with them, and give them a good drubbing. Is not all our glory made up of beating the French and the Dutch? And what is to become of history, and the army and the fleet, if we go on this way? He does not stop to consider that the army, at least, thrives as well with peace as war; that it continues to increase; that it eats, drinks, and sleeps as well, and dresses better, and lives a great deal more easily and comfortably in peace than in war. But, then, what is to become of history, and the drubbing of the French? Who may, however, possibly die of “envy and admiration of our glorious constitution.”
The old squire loves the laws of England; that is, all the laws that ever were passed by kings, lords, and commons, especially if they have been passed some twenty years, and he has had to administer them. The poor-law and the game-law, the impressment act, the law of primogeniture, the law of capital punishments; all kind of private acts for the inclosure of commons; turnpike acts, stamp acts, and acts of all sorts; he loves and venerates them all, for they are part and parcel of the statute law of England. As a matter of course, he hates most religiously all offenders against such acts. The poor are a very good sort of people; nay, he has a thorough and hereditary liking for the