A DAY DREAM. BY FRANK E. SMEDLEY. THERE are bright and happy hours There are many sweets that mingle There are fairer, brighter things, Thus I mused one soft spring morn, Tell me which art thou possessing?" But the bird was singing still, And an echo from the hill Seem'd to ask me why I pondered. Then I answered musingly, "Love, the urchin, ever roving For our friendship's memory still." PICTURES ON THE PAVEMENT. BY GODFREY TURNER. No. I. THE FIRE. ERMONS in stones? Not a doubt of it! And the lithology of this great book of London in particular, furnishes many a strange homily on many a strange text, as many a Cockney Jaques can inform you. The more you run-to and fro, and up and down in the vast wilderness-the more you may read. Whittington takes very little time, poor lad, to discover that the great city is not paved with gold; and then he will begin to find that it Sermons in is, in a measure, paved with a Golden Lectureship. stones? Ay, indeed, and Pictures, too. Where doth Wisdom cry aloud, if not in the streets? Where do we see presentments of “real life," excelling in wonderful reality those volumes of fiction and morals which enterprising publishers continually recommend by unauthenticated quotations of newspaper praise-if not on the Pavement? A fig for all your Mysteries of London! Say that they are truewhich I don't say, by any manner of means-and what then? Verily their day is over. The Brothers Mayhew and the detectives have brought to light as much as we wanted to know, and any mysteries remaining may stay where they are, in quite exceptional corners, for all the good or harm they can do us. But step aside, my friend, a little way out of the stream of midday traffic, and, from your unobserved observing place, make use of your eyes for ten minutes. Si concionem requiris, circumspice. Here is a sermon that you may ponder for the rest of the day. But there is no mystery about it. The things demonstrated to you are common things; the facts are plain enough, and are facts which occur perpetually. Disregard them not, on that account, if you would acquire any kind of useful knowledge. Did you ever make one of many gazers at a great fire? Did you ever verify the reporter's account of a terrific conflagration; ascertain with your own eyes that the flames, owing to the combustible nature of the materials, spread with alarming rapidity, and that the engines really were got to work in an admirable manner; convince yourself that the strong body of police, under the able direction of Superintendent Firkin, actually was of great service in keeping off the pressure of the crowd; and see, beyond all reach of doubt or contradiction, that the steeples of the various metropolitan churches positively did stand out in bold relief against the sky, what time the flames shot up a height of more than forty feet, and illumined the country for many miles round? A thoughtful writer-it would be simple justice to make a more exact reference, if, in these days of cheap and many publications, one could manage to certify the authorship of every good thing-has remarked on the great difference between the facial expression of people sitting opposite each other in a railway carriage or an omnibus, and of people working opposite each other at the handles of a fire-engine. A better illustration could not be found of the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. God knows we sometimes need the touch, all of us; and let us thank the trouble, misfortune, danger, suffering, or annoy, which will bring it. At an early hour of any day, in any week, month, and year you please, Police-constable Ecks was on duty in Wye-street, Zedfordsquare, when he discovered smoke issuing from the front windows of the extensive premises in the occupancy of Mr. Stearine, the eminent and old-established wax and tallow-chandler. Ecks at once aroused the inmates, who succeeded with difficulty in effecting their escape. Messengers were immediately despatched for the engines, which were soon upon the spot, and, an ample supply of water having been obtained, were got to work in that manner which is not to be otherwise described than as admirable. Owing to the inflammable nature of the stock, several hours elapsed before any impression could be made upon the devouring element, but at length the firemen succeeded in overcoming its fury, though not until the entire range of buildings, with the whole of their valuable contents were destroyed, and much injury done to the adjoining premises. The origin of the fire is enveloped in obscurity. Not so is the recollection of that fire, in the mind of him who now writes about it. A shivery morning it was; a raw, chill, comfortless, agueish, sciatical morning; not the morning of a lusty winter, frosty but kindly, numbing the fingers of Aurora into a semblance of their May-day rosiness. No. Her digits on that morning were cold and clammy; and on her hair and garments hung as wicked dew as ever Gossip Sycorax could have brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen; nay, from yet unwholesomer court and alley, and lip of reeking sewer. It was November. The hour of two was clanging in the dismal fog. Two o'clock on a Saturday morning, as I well remember, for personal reasons, which I will presently to you unfold. The many tons of clashing, groaning metal were in agreement as to a half-minute or so; but their unanimity was expressed in horribly discording voices. Crash, crash, boom, boom, ding-dong, crash; what racked and fevered heads turn upon their pillows now, to catch the death-knell of another sleepless hour! Come light; come wretchedness, and doubt, and want, and fear, and torturing delays of hope, and all accustomed and familiar evils that the day can bring, so that the day come too, and the dreadful night be past. Silent once more. The dull, monotonous tramp of the policeman, and the listless footfall of the vagrant; the solitary rattle of the night cab, the sound of stumbling hoofs, and the heavy fall of the driver's whip; shrill tongues quarrelling, with now and then a tipsy screech these are the only audible voices of the night. They cease. Fire! That cry, once uttered, is taken up, as it seems, by a whole waking population. Powers above! Where do all the people spring from? Fire, fire! Here they come, running, pushing, tearing, scrambling, gathering in numbers and in strength of cry. Fire, fire! The old, the young, the weak, the powerful, the well-to-do, the needy, the dissolute, the helpless, and the starving; here they come, here they come; jostling at corners, pouring amain from unobserved openings of unknown hiding-spots; all eager, and none sorry for the cause of an excitement which is as good as drink, and costs nothing. Fire! fire! fire! Led by the light, we soon arrive in front of the burning house, and find that there is none of the noise and commotion, which forced us more than once to take refuge in some door-way, as we came hither. The crowd-shall we ever cease wondering how such a crowd could have collected so instantaneously, at such a time as this?—is motionless and dumb. You hear the continuous roar of the flames, and the steady beat, beat, of the engines. You hear the calm, authoritative voice of the Superintendent of the Brigade, giving his orders to the firemen. The flames are driven hither and thither by the streams that are poured upon them from different points of attack; but only to make more desperate sallies, when they have recovered and concentrated their force. The dark forms of the firemen, as, with cautious daring they walk along high parapets, and poise themselves on rooftops, are objects of interest, until the provoking success of their efforts at self-preservation begins to tire. Then fresh incidents are looked for by the crowd. Another engine! No! Three cabs, freighted with M.P.'s, and racing for the best place. Shame! Where's the police? "Ah, mum, well you may say it, which I declare, and no more nor two hour ago, I was a-making of the percise obserwation to the Elephant's young man, goin in by the bar-henterence, I ses, them fellers, I ses, if they was only learned their duty, I ses, and people was took up as ought to be took up, rich or poor no consekens; to be sure mum he ses, jest so." It was Saturday morning, I think I told you, engaging at the same time to give a satisfactory explanation of my ability to recollect the day with exactitude. And this is how I remember. Friday night is a night on which I am always at work very late, and I had just got away from the printers, and was walking homeward, when I heard the city clocks strike two, and, soon afterwards, the alarm of fire. Now, other people are obliged to be late, too, on Friday night, or there would be no Saturday newspapers. The street in which the fire broke out was not far from the neighbourhood of all the printing-offices; and a rather numerous party of gentlemen, each more or less known by name to the reading world, soon met together, and were, almost as soon, in the thick of the work; handing buckets, taking a turn at the pumps, and making themselves generally useful, out of that boyish spirit of fun which is nearly always to be found in the gravest man-ofletters, and which ought surely not to be grudged even to the lightest and least instructive. VOL. V. D Fun! I could find fun at a funeral, were it not that the peculiar atmosphere of the undertaker's men shrouds all my perceptions, and that the earthy smell of the cake and wine makes me sick. There was, for certain, a good deal of fun found at that fire; and I don't think that the loss fell any heavier on the respected Mr. Stearine, in consequence. The people working together—and how they did work!-were, for the most part, accustomed to anything rather than unanimous pulls in the same direction. Let us glance at a few of the group. There is the Reverend Singein Camelhair, (who preaches a kind of stucco-Gothic Christianity, at the bijou church, round the corner, and writes the cleverest, brawniest articles on the side of an intelligent respectability, in the Latter-day Review,) working away, cheek-by-jowl with Coburg Smithers, the comic author-jolliest of iconoclasts and knockers-down of social superstitions. Perhaps there is more sympathy between these two gentlemen than you may suppose. They are both hearty admirers, in spite of the philosophy which, to a certain extent, they maintain in common, and which is not favourable to enthusiastic admiration. Each, in his own way, thinks that good authorship is a good thing; but they quite agree in holding up to authors the virtue of getting something better to do. For Camelhair, nobody has reason to doubt his earnestness or sincerity; but it would be simply taking him at his own word, to say that he is about the last man in the world who might be expected to leave a good sprat-curing business, in order to set up as a fisher of men. Not but that an ordained (and beneficed) fisher is a respectable person enough, his call being recognized by society, wherein he occupies a status of no inconsiderable advantage. It would be absolutely impertinent, as well as impolite, to refer him to a worldly occupation as a means of earning his dinner. Now, your uncertified "week-day preacher" is very differently placed, there can be no question of that; and the more determined he may seem to make the best of his precarious position, and the more soul he may throw into his work, the greater exception does Camelhair logically take to his irregular and mischievous proceedings. For, you see, besides being a dissenter, an artist, a vagabond, a fellow who cannot be induced to pay proper respect to the moral attributes of a certain income, derivable from legitimate sources, this man is consistent. He will regard literature as an art; he will pursue it with an artist's devotion; he will not mourn, he, "whom world's disgrace, shall from its paths debar." He is even so absurd as to think that, by the pursuit of book-making, he may claim "a substantial connection with the practical business of life," just as reasonably and fairly as he might claim it, were he engaged in boot-making, or to paraphrase the answer of a venerable conundrum-in any other professional cure of souls. But, as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton would say, this is a digression. Let us end it. There is young Asp of the Pleader, a fellow of sardonic genius and of a feminine gentleness of heart, heaping jokes of fire on the head of his most intimate enemy, Gritt's, who will go home, by and by, perfectly charmed with Asp, and meditating a pompous recantation of all the wrong he has done that gay young cynic in the columns of a weekly |