ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG18510"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG185101607"ᐳNo one spoke or stirred.  They felt that an awful and blessed spirit overshadowed the lovers, and were hushed, as if in the sanctuary of God.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101608"ᐳSuddenly again she raised her head from his bosom, and in a tone, in which her old queenliness mingled strangely with the saddest tenderness,—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101609"ᐳ‘All of you go away now; I must talk to my husband alone.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101610"ᐳThey went, leading out the squire, who cast puzzled glances toward the pair, and murmured to himself that ‘she was sure to get well now Smith was come: everything went right when he was in the way.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101611"ᐳSo they were left alone.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101612"ᐳ‘I do not look so very ugly, my darling, do I?  Not so very ugly? though they have cut off all my poor hair, and I told them so often not!  But I kept a lock for you;’ and feebly she drew from under the pillow a long auburn tress, and tried to wreathe it round his neck, but could not, and sunk back.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101613"ᐳPoor fellow! he could bear no more.  He hid his face in his hands, and burst into a long low weeping.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101614"ᐳ‘I am very thirsty, darling; reach me—No, I will drink no more, except from your dear lips.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101615"ᐳHe lifted up his head, and breathed his whole soul upon her lips; his tears fell on her closed eyelids.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101616"ᐳ‘Weeping?  No.—You must not cry.  See how comfortable I am.  They are all so kind—soft bed, cool room, fresh air, sweet drinks, sweet scents.  Oh, so different from that room!’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101617"ᐳ‘What room?—my own!’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101618"ᐳ‘Listen, and I will tell you.  Sit down—put your arm under my head—so.  When I am on your bosom I feel so strong.  God! let me last to tell him all.  It was for that I sent for him.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101619"ᐳAnd then, in broken words, she told him how she had gone up to the fever patient at Ashy, on the fatal night on which Lancelot had last seen her.  Shuddering, she hinted at the horrible filth and misery she had seen, at the foul scents which had sickened her.  A madness of remorse, she said, had seized her.  She had gone, in spite of her disgust, to several houses which she found open.  There were worse cottages there than even her father’s; some tradesmen in a neighbouring town had been allowed to run up a set of rack rent hovels.—Another shudder seized her when she spoke of them; and from that point in her story all was fitful, broken, like the images of a hideous dream.  ‘Every instant those foul memories were defiling her nostrils.  A horrible loathing had taken possession of her, recurring from time to time, till it ended in delirium and fever.  A scent-fiend was haunting her night and day,’ she said.  ‘And now the curse of the Lavingtons had truly come upon her.  To perish by the people whom they made.  Their neglect, cupidity, oppression, are avenged on me!  Why not?  Have I not wantoned in down and perfumes, while they, by whose labour my luxuries were bought, were pining among scents and sounds,—one day of which would have driven me mad!  And then they wonder why men turn Chartists!  There are those horrible scents again!  Save me from them!  Lancelot—darling!  Take me to the fresh air!  I choke!  I am festering away!  The Nun-pool!  Take all the water, every drop, and wash Ashy clean again!  Make a great fountain in it—beautiful marble—to bubble and gurgle, and trickle and foam, for ever and ever, and wash away the sins of the Lavingtons, that the little rosy children may play round it, and the poor toil-bent woman may wash—and wash—and drink—Water! water!  I am dying of thirst!’ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG185101765"ᐳ‘Doubtless you did.  Some day you will know why.  Does that former dream of a human Son relieve this dream of none of its awfulness?  May not the type be beloved for the sake of its Antitype, even if the very name of All-Father is no guarantee for His paternal pity! ...  But you have had this dream.  How know you, that in it you were not allowed a glimpse, however dim and distant, of Him whom the Catholics call the Father?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101766"ᐳ‘It may be; but—’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101767"ᐳ‘Stay again.  Had you never the sense of a Spirit in you—a will, an energy, an inspiration, deeper than the region of consciousness and reflection, which, like the wind, blew where it listed, and you heard the sound of it ringing through your whole consciousness, and yet knew not whence it came, or whither it went, or why it drove you on to dare and suffer, to love and hate; to be a fighter, a sportsman, an artist—’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101768"ᐳ‘And a drunkard!’ added Lancelot, sadly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101769"ᐳ‘And a drunkard.  But did it never seem to you that this strange wayward spirit, if anything, was the very root and core of your own personality?  And had you never a craving for the help of some higher, mightier spirit, to guide and strengthen yours; to regulate and civilise its savage and spasmodic self-will; to teach you your rightful place in the great order of the universe around; to fill you with a continuous purpose and with a continuous will to do it?  Have you never had a dream of an Inspirer?—a spirit of all spirits?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101770"ᐳLancelot turned away with a shudder.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG185101771"ᐳ‘Talk of anything but that!  Little you know—and yet you seem to know everything—the agony of craving with which I have longed for guidance; the rage and disgust which possessed me when I tried one pretended teacher after another, and found in myself depths which their spirits could not, or rather would not, touch.  I have been irreverent to the false, from very longing to worship the true; I have been a rebel to sham leaders, for very desire to be loyal to a real one; I have envied my poor cousin his Jesuits; I have envied my own pointers their slavery to my whip and whistle; I have fled, as a last resource, to brandy and opium, for the inspiration which neither man nor demon would bestow...  Then I found ... you know my story...  And when I looked to her to guide and inspire me, behold! I found myself, by the very laws of humanity, compelled to guide and inspire her;—blind, to lead the blind!—Thank God, for her sake, that she was taken from me!’ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18510763"ᐳ‘The forest-laws were sharp and stern,    The forest blood was keen, They lashed together for life and death    Beneath the hollies green.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510764"ᐳ‘The metal good and the walnut-wood    Did soon in splinters flee; They tossed the orts to south and north,    And grappled knee to knee.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510765"ᐳ‘They wrestled up, they wrestled down,    They wrestled still and sore; The herbage sweet beneath their feet    Was stamped to mud and gore.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510766"ᐳAnd all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing.  Oh! if pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilised Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake!ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510767"ᐳHad I the pen of Homer (though they say he never used one), or even that of the worthy who wasted precious years in writing a Homer Burlesqued, what heroic exploits might not I immortalise!  In every stupid serf and cunning ruffian there, there was a heart as brave as Ajax’s own; but then they fought with sticks instead of lances, and hammered away on fustian jackets instead of brazen shields; and, therefore, poor fellows, they were beneath ‘the dignity of poetry,’ whatever that may mean.  If one of your squeamish ‘dignity-of-poetry’ critics had just had his head among the gun-stocks for five minutes that night, he would have found it grim tragic earnest enough; not without a touch of fun though, here and there.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510768"ᐳLancelot leant against a tree and watched the riot with folded arms, mindful of his promise to Argemone, and envied Tregarva as he hurled his assailants right and left with immense strength, and led the van of battle royally.  Little would Argemone have valued the real proof of love which he was giving her as he looked on sulkily, while his fingers tingled with longing to be up and doing.  Strange—that mere lust of fighting, common to man and animals, whose traces even the lamb and the civilised child evince in their mock-fights, the earliest and most natural form of play.  Is it, after all, the one human propensity which is utterly evil, incapable of being turned to any righteous use?  Gross and animal, no doubt it is, but not the less really pleasant, as every Irishman and many an Englishman knows well enough.  A curious instance of this, by the bye, occurred in Paris during the February Revolution.  A fat English coachman went out, from mere curiosity, to see the fighting.  As he stood and watched, a new passion crept over him; he grew madder and madder as the bullets whistled past him; at last, when men began to drop by his side, he could stand it no longer, seized a musket, and rushed in, careless which side he took,—ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18510873"ᐳ‘I am much obliged to you for the compliment,’ said Lancelot, gruffly; ‘but really I don’t see how I deserve it.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510874"ᐳ‘Desarve it!  Sure luck’s all, and that’s your luck, and not your deserts at all.  To have the handsomest girl in the county dying for love of ye’—(Panurgus had a happy knack of blurting out truths—when they were pleasant ones).  ‘And she just the beautifulest creature that ever spilte shoe-leather, barring Lady Philandria Mountflunkey, of Castle Mountflunkey, Quane’s County, that shall be nameless.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510875"ᐳ‘Upon my word, O’Blareaway, you seem to be better acquainted with my matters than I am.  Don’t you think, on the whole, it might be better to mind your own business?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510876"ᐳ‘Me own business!  Poker o’ Moses! and ain’t it me own business?  Haven’t ye spilte my tenderest hopes?  And good luck to ye in that same, for ye’re as pretty a rider as ever kicked coping-stones out of a wall; and poor Paddy loves a sportsman by nature.  Och! but ye’ve got a hand of trumps this time.  Didn’t I mate the vicar the other day, and spake my mind to him?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510877"ᐳ‘What do you mean?’ asked Lancelot, with a strong expletive.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510878"ᐳ‘Faix, I told him he might as well Faugh a ballagh—make a rid road, and get out of that, with his bowings and his crossings, and his Popery made asy for small minds, for there was a gun a-field that would wipe his eye,—maning yourself, ye Prathestant.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510879"ᐳ‘All I can say is, that you had really better mind your own business, and I’ll mind my own.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510880"ᐳ‘Och,’ said the good-natured Irishman, ‘and it’s you must mind my business, and I’ll mind yours; and that’s all fair and aqual.  Ye’ve cut me out intirely at the Priory, ye Tory, and so ye’re bound to give me a lift somehow.  Couldn’t ye look me out a fine fat widow, with an illigant little fortune?  For what’s England made for except to find poor Paddy a wife and money?  Ah, ye may laugh, but I’d buy me a chapel at the West-end: me talents are thrown away here intirely, wasting me swateness on the desert air, as Tom Moore says’ (Panurgus used to attribute all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses); ‘and I flatter meself I’m the boy to shute the Gospel to the aristocracy.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510881"ᐳLancelot burst into a roar of laughter, and escaped over the next gate: but the Irishman’s coarse hints stuck by him as they were intended to do.  ‘Dying for the love of me!’  He knew it was an impudent exaggeration, but, somehow, it gave him confidence; ‘there is no smoke,’ he thought, ‘without fire.’  And his heart beat high with new hopes, for which he laughed at himself all the while.  It was just the cordial which he needed.  That conversation determined the history of his life.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18510527"ᐳ‘Be it so; but who wrote them?  Not the German aristocracy for the people, but the German people for themselves.  There is the secret of their power.  Why not educate the people up to such a standard that they should be able to write their own literature?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510528"ᐳ‘What,’ said Mr. Chalklands, of Chalklands, who sat opposite, ‘would you have working men turn ballad writers?  There would be an end of work, then, I think.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510529"ᐳ‘I have not heard,’ said Lancelot, ‘that the young women—ladies, I ought to say, if the word mean anything—who wrote the “Lowell Offering,” spun less or worse cotton than their neighbours.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510530"ᐳ‘On the contrary,” said Lord Minchampstead, ‘we have the most noble accounts of heroic industry and self-sacrifice in girls whose education, to judge by its fruits, might shame that of most English young ladies.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510531"ᐳMr. Chalklands expressed certain confused notions that, in America, factory girls carried green silk parasols, put the legs of pianos into trousers, and were too prudish to make a shirt, or to call it a shirt after it was made, he did not quite remember which.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510532"ᐳ‘It is a great pity,’ said Lord Minchampstead, ‘that our factory girls are not in the same state of civilisation.  But it is socially impossible.  America is in an abnormal state.  In a young country the laws of political economy do not make themselves fully felt.  Here, where we have no uncleared world to drain the labour-market, we may pity and alleviate the condition of the working-classes, but we can do nothing more.  All the modern schemes for the amelioration which ignore the laws of competition, must end either in pauperisation’—(with a glance at Lord Vieuxbois),—‘or in the destruction of property.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510533"ᐳLancelot said nothing, but thought the more.  It did strike him at the moment that the few might, possibly, be made for the many, and not the many for the few; and that property was made for man, not man for property.  But he contented himself with asking,—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510534"ᐳ‘You think, then, my lord, that in the present state of society, no dead-lift can be given to the condition—in plain English, the wages—of working men, without the destruction of property?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510535"ᐳLord Minchampstead smiled, and parried the question.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510536"ᐳ‘There may be other dead-lift ameliorations, my young friend, besides a dead-lift of wages.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18510537"ᐳSo Lancelot thought, also; but Lord Minchampstead would have been a little startled could he have seen Lancelot’s notion of a dead-lift.  Lord Minchampstead was thinking of cheap bread and sugar.  Do you think that I will tell you of what Lancelot was thinking?ᐸ/pᐳ
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