LIVE AND LET LIVE. METHINKS we should have this engraven Right eager to pounce and to feed; The recompense fairness should give; But pause 'ere we trample a neighbour, For Duty says, "Live and let live." Shame to those, who secure in their thriving, There is room in the world for more pleasure, And he who neglects the behest, And spreadeth Love's pall o'er his breast. And the spirit that covets unduly, May doubt if that God will forgive; For Religion ne'er preaches more truly, Than when she says, " Live and let live." ELIZA COOK. How little we know what is in the bosoms of those around us! How natural it is, however, to feel and act as if we knew how to account for all that appears on the surface by the limited acquaintance we have with circumstances and feelings-to resent an indifference of which we know not the cause-to approve or condemn without allowance for chagrin, or despair, or love, or hope, or distress-any of the deep under-currents for ever at work in the depths of human bosoms. The young man at your side at a dinner-party may have a duel on his hands for the morning, a disgrace imminent in credit or honour, or a refused heart or an accepted one, newly crushed or newly made happy; or (more common still and less allowed for), he may feel the first impression of disease, or the consequences of an indigestion; and for his agreeableness or disagreeableness, you try to account by something in yourself, some feeling toward yourself, as if you, and you only, could affect his spirits or give a colour to his mood or manners. The old man's thought of death, the mother's overwhelming interest in her child, the woman's up-spring of emotion or love, are visitors to the soul that come unbidden and out of time; and you can neither feast nor mourn secure against their interruption. We would explain many a coldness could we look into the heart concealed from us; we should often pity when we hate, love when we think we cannot ever forgive, admire when we curl the lip with scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of any human action is a culpable temerity, of all our sins the most unfeeling and frequent. DIAMOND DUST. VOLTAIRE used to say that the heart never grew old, I but that it became sad from being lodged in a ruin. THE minds of scholars are libraries; those of antiquaries, lumber-rooms; those of sportsmen, kennels; those of epicures, larders and cellars. IN all waters there are some fish which have to swim against the stream; and in every community persons are to be found who delight in being opposed to every body else. STIFF necks are always diseased ones, and trees that are hollow are the most unbending; but their inflexibility is the product and proof of unsoundness rather than of strength. THERE is nothing so certain, we take it, as that those who are the most alert in discovering the faults of a work of genius, are the least touched with its beauties. CANTING bigotry and caressing criticism, are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own. AFFRONTS are innocent when men are worthless. Look down upon genius and he will rise to a giant,attempt to crush him, and he will soar to a god. No man will so speedily and violently resent a supposed wrong, as he who is most accustomed to inflict injuries upon his associates. MANY have felt the lash upon their backs for the want of a bridle upon their tongues. PRUDENCE.-Over-caution and over-preparation not seldom defeat their own object. Washington Irving tells us of a Dutchman, who, having to leap a ditch, went back three miles, that he might have a good run at it, and found himself so completely winded, when he arrived at it again, that he was obliged to sit down on the wrong side to recover his breath. THE study of literature nourishes youth, entertains old age, adorns prosperity, solaces adversity, is delightful at home, and unobtrusive abroad. A WOMAN's heart is the true place for a man's likeness; Daguerreotype-like, an instant gives the impression, but an age of sorrow and change cannot efface it. ART is the result of inquiry into the beautiful; science, into that of the true. Diffuse, throughout the people, the cultivation of truth and the love of beauty, before science, and art will be really understood. The end will be the natural tendency of a better and loftier education. A HYPOCRITE seems to be the only perfect charactersince it embraces the extremes of what human nature is, and of what it would be thought. THERE is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails, some neither one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very happy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones, but all have a stomach. ALL that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. IN a course of friendship, some difference of character, even a little roughness or acidity, make relish to the palate; as olives may be served up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by Jons OWEN CLARKE. (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, in the City of London. Saturday, July 28, 1849. Here's a health to the many, the kind and the true, Ye have done what I warmly besought ye to do, Though ye know and know well, what this spirit must fee. Ye have frankly stood forth, ye have praised, ye have cheered, For though sympathy's links had allied and endeared, I had built my hope's creed on your word and your deed, And the voyage my bark has achieved, Shows how earnest and true were the trustworthy crew, I can render ye nought but the plain-spoken truth, But ye welcomed such lines in my earliest youth, Let them say that till heaven takes back what it gave, Let them tell that the Future shall better the Past, That my working shall be, to set human love free, Ye have granted me all that I care to possess, Ye nurture its bloom in your wide "household room," Then a health to the many, the kind and the true, But be sure that this heart must e'er fail to impart, ELIZA COOK. [PRICE 14d. THE WORLD GROWING BETTER. THERE are many persons who are found slow to admit that the human race makes satisfactory progress, if any progress at all, at the present day. They will refer us to some golden age which existed a long time ago, of which history, however, makes no mention, when England was "merrie England," and all things were as they should be. But now, the world is out of joint; everything is going wrong, and irretrievable ruin and misery are before us! We have even great writers among us, who see nothing but "cant" and "flunkeyism" in the life of the present age, and who fail to discern any remnant of heroism in the nineteenth century, perhaps for the very sufficient reason that they shut their eyes to it. How often, also, do we hear that "the country is on the brink of ruin!" In our own comparatively short life, we have heard of the country being "ruined" a dozen times over, and we now begin to suspect the oft-repeated assertion to have been only a rather strong figure of speech, for the country is as strong, active, progressive, and really hopeful as ever. The old are apt to regret the days that have gone as brighter and happier days than those they now live in ; and they are occasionally to be heard lamenting over the "degeneracy of the present age," that things are not now as they were in our younger days," and so on. But it must be remembered that they no longer see life with the same eyes as they did when they were young. Life has lost its freshness and novelty to them; the bright hopes of their young hearts have been exhausted; their course has nearly run; the desires of existence have been satiated; and they look back upon the life of their youth as a period far brighter and happier than any that has succeeded. The tendency will be the same with each one of us as we grow old; we too may be found lamenting the degeneracy of the age in our later years. Yet we have known old men, and women too, who have never lost the cheerful and hopeful natures of their youth-who have been found ready to welcome any new truth, to aid in any new movement calculated to promote the well-being of the people, and who cheerfully admitted the immense advances which the present age is making in all respects, as compared with the periods which have preceded it. "But look into the newspapers," some will say, "and see there what misery is now being suffered by the lower classes of the people: we heard nothing of all this in past times." No! The world rarely or never heard of its suffering classes in past times; they suffered, pined, and died, in utter obscurity; and none heard of them. But now every sufferer has a voice; the press is an ubiquity penetrating wherever humanity reaches. The strength of the press is in its exposure of abuses; while they were to wear "both on the breast and on the back of their outermost garment some notable badge or token, to be assigned them by the head officer, with the assent of two justices." Such was the patronage extended to literature in the good old times! and wherever those exist, it drags them to light. It details, and reiterates in detail, the sufferings endured by all classes-classes whose sufferings fifty years ago were altogether unheeded. It inquires closely into the condition of the people. It produces an active public opinion, which, operating through the legislative body, institutes systematic inquiries into the health of towns, the dwellings of the poor, labour in factories, mines, and workshops, the treatment of criminals and lunatics, education, emigration, and all possible subjects of interest to the public. The results of immense masses of evidence taken before commissioners and committees of of inquiry, are published and disseminated amongst the people through the medium of the newspapers. Thus we are made familiar with the very worst facts in our social condition, which obtain a prominence, such as the good facts have no chance of securing. For, it is the object of the friends of popular improvement (and they were never at any period in our history more numerous than now) to publish and proclaim the worst side of our social condition as extensively as possible, as the first step towards obtaining the greatest possible amelioration and improvement. These inquiries into the social condition of the people by the government, strongly is generally imagined at the present day. It still promark the character and tendency of the present age. They arise out of an extensively prevalent desire to elevate the condition of the people at large; and they have already been attended by the most salutary consequences. In the next reign (1 Edw. VI. chap. iii.) it was further enacted, that "vagabonds, who were unprofitable members, or rather enemies of the commonwealth," who refused to work and lived idly for three days, were to be branded on the breast with a red-hot iron with the letter "V"; and any such unfortunate might be claimed as a slave for two years by the person informing against him. He might then be set to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise. If he ran away from his master for sixteen days together, he was subject to become his slave for life; and if he ran away a second time, he was to suffer death as a felon. The masters might let out the labour of their slaves for hire, like any other of their chattels, and they might so hire them out, to work in chains, or under any other kind of restraint which they choose to impose. The comparatively merciful poor law of Elizabeth consolidated all previous acts relating to the poor. Still this law was much more severe than vided for the whipping of beggars according to lawa practice which continued during the reign of James I.; and it is probably in allusion to this practice that Shakspere makes Edgar, in "King Lear," speak of "Poor Tom, who is whipped from tything to tything, and stock'd, punish'd, and imprison'd." Even down to the reign of Queen Anne, "incorrigible and dangerous adjudged felons, and to suffer death. We need scarcely contrast with this the humane treatment of the poor required by the public opinion of the present day. The period comprehended within a single life is so short, as to afford but very limited means of judging of the growth and progress of a nation; and we shall pro-rogues" found begging and wandering, were liable to be bably fail to recognise the fact of social progress, unless we cast our eyes backward for a generation or two, and thus take in the conditions of several periods remote from each other. And we think the candid observer who withdraws himself for a moment from the whirl of pass-admitted that the working classes have made great ing events, and looks backward with a philosophic eye on the course which our nation has run, will not fail to note the great and visible marks of improvement which have been set up and established from one succeeding age to another. It will be admitted that the progress of improvement is comparatively slow, if measured by the extensive field of improvement which yet remains unoccupied. But all human improvement is necessarily slow. How extremely tardy is civilization! How gradually do its humanizing influences operate in the elevation of a people! It requires the lapse of generations before its effects can be so much as discerned: for a generation is but as a day in the history of civilization. It has cost most nations ages of wars before they could even conquer their right of existence as nations. It took four centuries of martyrdom to establish Christianity, and a century of civil wars to establish the Reformation. The emancipation of the serfs from feudal slavery was only reached through long ages of misery. But social progress has been made, as the issue proves. From the days in which our English progenitors rushed to battle in their war-paint, or those more recent times in which the whole labouring people of England were feudal serfs, bought and sold with the soil they tilled, to those in which we now live,-how wide the difference, how gratifying the contrast! In no respect are the evidences of progress more decided than as regards the increasing care now displayed by society for the well-being of the poor and the helpless of all grades, as compared with the practices of former times. The statute-book affords sufficient proofs of this great feature of progress. By an Act passed in 1530, every vagabond, whole and mighty in body, who should be found begging, and could give no account how he got his living, was to be tied to the cart's tail and whipped till his body was bloody by reason of such whipping." Only the infirm and aged poor, as also " poor scholars," had license given them to beg within certain districts, As regards their personal freedom, it must also be advances. In the twelfth year of Richard II's reign, a law was passed, enacting that all persons who had served in any agricultural occupation till they were twelve years of age, were adscriptæ glebæ, or slaves of the soil for life, and liable to be bought and sold with it. They were absolutely prohibited from entering into any trade or pursuit in the borough towns and cities; and if they strayed from their usual dwelling-place without a testimonial from a justice of the peace, they were liable to be apprehended and put in the stocks. The growth of towns and cities, which were governed by their own laws, afforded, however, a safe retreat to numerous of the runaway serfs from the agricultural districts; the destructive wars of the Roses broke down the power of the landed aristocracy, and weakened their hold of the labouring population; and, as it was always the interest of the early monarchs to foster the growth of the towns, and lessen the power of the nobles, laws were gradually enacted for the emancipation of the serfs from the influence of the feudal system. Yet, slavery was not destroyed by Act of Parliament in England so much as it was by public opinion; it died out of itself; and it is a curious fact, that there were still remnants of the old feudal serfs in Great Britain as late as the middle of the last century, the last classes of workmen who were emancipated by Act of Parliament having been the colliers and salters of Scotland. The old Acts of Parliament were very stringent on the labouring classes of England. By the Statute of Labourers, a limit was fixed on the wages of labour; it prohibited labourers from removing from one place to another, and regulated their diet and apparel. The hours of labour were also fixed by the old Acts of Parliament, one of Henry II. specifying them to be "from five of the clocke in the morning, till between seven and eight of the clocke of the evening," with two hours interval during the day for meals-showing quite another kind of regard for the comfort of the operative classes from that which prevails in modern times. " ELIZA COOK'S JOURNAL. Another remarkable indication of social progress, is the which existed during the greater part of the last year, the increased duration of life at the present time as compared apprehensions in Manchester are fewer by about 300 with all former periods. A high average of deaths is persons than they were in the year 1847, when the in all societies a proof of social suffering; for the more number taken into custody was less than in any previous It is also satisfactory to be a human being suffers, the shorter time does he live; year, and fewer, by upwards of 7,500, than were appreable to state, that the number of persons summarily conwhereas, the happier and more comfortable he is, the hended in the year 1842. longer is his term of existence. From all known facts, it appears that the dura-victed and committed to trial is less than either in the year tion of human life in the civilized countries of Europe, 1847, or in the year 1842." It is true, there are excepBut it is quesis now at least double what it was three centuries tions to the general decrease, in some districts; in ago. The present average mortality is almost one in Ireland, for instance, which must unhappily be regarded thirty-six; in England it is as low as one in forty; as exceptional in our present social state. in London it is rather less than this. Yet Mr. Rick- tionable whether Ireland has at any former period been man states, that even at the beginning of last century, better than it is now, and it cannot but be generally the mortality was as high as one in twenty. In Paris, admitted, we think, that crime everywhere has recently in the fourteenth century, the mortality was as high as assumed much less barbarous and revolting forms than one in fourteen! Even at Stockholm, in the middle of previously. Our great cities are no longer the centres of last century, it was one in sixteen, though the average crime as they were formerly. It is a curious, but welllife at both these places is now almost as high as in the authenticated fact, that the crime of London is at present average of European cities. At Geneva, in 1566, during below the average crime of England, at least as exhibited the period of the Reformation, it appears that one half of in the annual convictions. In the "good old times," Robberies of the children born died within their sixth year; in the so called, it was not safe to sally into the streets after seventeenth century not until the twelfth year; in the dusk; and none dared then venture beyond the precincts eighteenth century, not until the twenty-seventh year; of the city without the protection of arms. "It did not mend the matter; for our punishments in these consequently in the space of three centuries the average the mails and stage coaches were frequent; and hanging duration of life at Geneva had increased five-fold. "thrown off" at says Dr. Southwood Smith, "that towards past times were shockingly sanguinary. Hanging was appears the close of the seventeenth century, the duration of the penalty for even petty thefts of five shillings and life in England was considerably less than in France, upwards. Twenty criminals were was less even than in Holland nearly a century Tyburn together of a morning. The hangman was then earlier. Since that period, surprising changes have taken the great moral teacher. place in all the nations of Europe; but in none has the change been so great as in England. From that period, when its mortality exceeded that of any great and prosperous European country, its mortality has been steadily diminishing, and at the present time the value of life is greater in England than in any other country in the world. Not only has the value of life been regularly increasing, until it has advanced beyond that of any country of which there is any record, but the remarkable fact is established, that the whole mass of its people now live considerably longer than its higher classes did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." It is true, our large towns are not yet nearly so healthy as they ought to be, and, as we firmly believe, they will yet bethanks to the salutary influence of a growing public opinion on this point; but at the same time it must be admitted that there is far more cleanliness, better drainage, more attention paid to comfort in the homes of the people generally, than used to prevail at former periods. We are no longer visited with the Plague, which made much frightful devastations in London and other great cities, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the year 1349, it was supposed that one-half of the entire population of Europe was destroyed by pestilence. In 1603, when the population of London was not more than one-tenth of what it is now, 36,000 persons were swept off by the plague; in 1636, about 10,000 died; and at the last great plague in 1665, not fewer than 68,596 persons perished in that city alone; evidences of the horrid unwholesomeness of the dwellings of the population. The spirit of social amelioration has also greatly diminished the extent and atrocity of crime. Crime, like all other symptoms of social disease, has grown much milder and less revolting in its forms during the last century. Our roads are not now beset with highwaymen, ready to murder when they cannot quietly rob; nor are our streets beset with footpads, pickpockets, and thieves. Take even the densely populated manufacturing districts, where crime is supposed to be the most prolific, and we find a gradual and most satisfactory decrease. Look at Manchester, for instance; Captain Willis, the chief constable there, tells us in a recent report, "that notwithstanding the excitement and depression in trade At a remote age, the destruction of human life by this agency was fearful. In Elizabeth's reign there were sent yearly to the gallows from thirteen to fourteen hundred people. During the reign of Henry VIII., 72,000 robbers, thieves, and vagabonds were hanged; then, in the words of an old Chronicler, "rogues were trussed up apace." The number of criminals did not seem to be lessened thereby; for they went about the country in bands of from 300 to 400, plundering the peaceable population. Even as late as 1596, a Somerset magistrate states, that "forty persons had been executed in that county in a year, for various felonies; thirty-five burnt in the hand; thirty-seven whipped; one hundred and eighty-three discharged;" "that notwithstanding the great number of indictments, the fifth part of the felonies committed in the county were not brought to trial;" and, "that the other counties of England were in no better condition than Somersetshire, and some of them in a worse." Notwithstanding the completeness of the existing No such statement can be made of any county in England now. methods for detecting crime, and especially the efficiency of the police, crime is gradually on the decrease as compared with the increase of the population; and all crimes of an atrocious character are greatly dimi nished in number; and this notwithstanding that the treatment of the criminal is much less severe than it used to be. When the noble philanthropist John Howard, looked into the state of the prisons of England and of Europe, prisoners cooped up in filthy and noisome dungeons, he found an indescribably revolting state of things; where no regular supply of food was provided for them, and where, if they had no money nor friends to feed them, they were left to starve. No water was provided; there was not even clean straw to lie on, and ventilation was utterly neglected. The prisons were pandemoniums of vice, filth, and disease, the physical and moral conditions of the wretched prisoners being alike hideous. All this is now entirely changed. We now aim at reforming and improving, as well as punishing. We provide comforts even for the vicious; and consider not even the most desperate beyond the reach of civilizing influences. We educate the children of vice, and labour to teach them industrial pursuits, thus winning them back to decency and virtue. Much yet remains to be done, it is true; but let us be thankful that a good beginning has been made, and that so much gratifying progress has already been accomplished. The spirit of the age is also to be recognised in its improved treatment of the much-to-be-pitied class of lunatics. Up to a comparatively recent period, lunatics were treated as cruelly as if they had been the worst of criminals. Force was the only mode of treament employed, and the occasional visitor to the madhouse was horrified by the confused sound of cries, vociferations, and the clanking of chains; for the poor maniacs were chained into small and narrow cells like wild beasts, and they were terrified by the infliction of the severest punishments. But here, too, at last, did reason and gentleness begin to assert their influence, and cruel torture gave place to kind and moral treatment. The mild system of treating the insane was practised in Italy long before it was introduced into this country. The harsher plan held its ground in England until a comparatively recent period; and the introduction of the humane mode of treatment is mainly due to the Society of Friends, who, by establishing their asylum at York, were enabled shortly to prove the highly beneficial results by which it was attended. The mild or humane system is now everywhere practised, and some of the most efficient asylums with which we are acquainted, are those esta blished for the treatment of the lunatic Poor. We shall afterwards be able to show that the improvement in the manners and customs of the people has been equally decided of recent years; but at present we have said enough, we think, to prove that the cause of social amelioration makes real progress. No one who looks at the character of the laws recorded on our statute-book within the last half-century-the Acts abolishing imprisonment for debt, the pillory, the penalty of death for petty thefts at the abolition of slavery, of female labour in mines, of climbing boys, and of unlimited labour in factories and workshops-at the Acts by which the penny postage has been established, health of towns enforced, public parks, museums and galleries of art promoted-not to speak of other great measures of more recent date, of a more strictly political character-but must acknowledge that, in England at least, the tendency of civilization is not backward, but onwards with an ever accelerating speed. The governments of the time did not lead the people to those great measures we have referred to, but the people far oftener led the governments. The governments were often dragged, almost per force, onwards; public opinion was ahead of the laws, and in obedience to public opinion the laws were amended. Let us confess that the work of progress has many formidable difficulties to encounter and overcome. There often needs a strong faith in the good and the true to preserve us from discouragement and despair. Still there are strong and sufficient grounds for continued hope and effort. Every day there is a more general recognition of the great truths, that to make men better, we must trust them more, and show them that they are trusted; that to develope the goodness which is in man, we must recognise the existence in them of those elements of goodness which reside in the breast of every human being, latent though they so often appear to be; and that, to enable this better nature of man to become unfolded, every opportunity must be allowed for its free use and exercise. Cherishing these truths and convictions, and regarding all present transitions, painful though they may be to some classes, yet, as working together for the ultimate good of our species, we think the healthy-minded and hopeful will not be indisposed to acknowledge with us, that the human race in these our own times, is steadily progressing, and that "The World is really growing Better." THE BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL. WHAT are all the steps by which man advances himself by degrees towards perfection but refinements-refinements in his wants, modes of living, his clothing, dwelling, furniture; refinements of his mind and his heart, of his sentiments and his passions, of his language, morals, customs, pleasures! What an advance from the first hut to a palace of Palladio's; from the canoe of a Carribbean to a ship of the line; from the three rude idols, as the Boeotians, in the olden times, represented their protecting goddesses and the Graces of Praxiteles; from a village of the Hottentots or wild Indians to a city like London; from the ornaments of a female of New Zealand to a splendid dress of the Sultana; from the language of a native of Tahiti to that of a Homer, a Virgil, a Tasso, a Milton, and a Voltaire! Through what innumerable degrees of refinement must man and his works have proceeded before they had placed this almost immeasurable distance behind them! The love of embellishment and refinement, and the dissatisfaction with a lower degree as soon as a higher has been recognised, are the only true and most simple motives by which man has advanced to what we see him. Every people who have become civilized are a proof of this principle; and if any such are to be found, who, with peculiar physical or moral hindrances, continue in the same state of unimprovability, or betray a complete want of impulse to improvement, we must needs consider them rather as a sort of human animals, than as actually men of our own race and species. THE LOVE OF FLOWERS. THE love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; the cottage has its pink, its rose, and its polyanthus ; the villa its dahlia, its clematis, and geranium. We cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. In the long and sombre months of winter, our love of nature, like the buds of vegetation, seems close and torpid; but, like them, it unfolds and reanimates with the opening year, and we welcome our long-lost associates, with a cordiality that no other season can excite, as friends in a foreign clime. The violet of autumn is greeted with none of the love with which we hail the violet of spring; it is unseasonable; perhaps it brings with it rather a sort of melancholy than a joy; we view it with curiosity, not affection; and thus the late is not like the early rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or splendour that so charms us,-for the fair maids of spring cannot compete with the grander matrons of the advanced year; they would be unperceived, perhaps lost, in the rosy bowers of summer and of autumn;-no, it is our first meeting with a long-lost friend, the reviving glow of a natural affection, that so warms us at this season. To maturity they give pleasure, as the harbinger of the renewal of life; to youth, they are an expanding being, opening years, hilarity, and joy; and the child let loose from the house, riots in the flowery meads "Monarch of all he surveys." There is not a prettier emblem of spring, than an infant sporting in the sunny field, with its osier basket, wreathed with butter-cups or orchises and daisies. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbours, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. |