jus' as if I couldn't goo a step fudder. I don't know how ever I did get home; and when I got into the house, I couldn't sit and I couldn't stand, and I couldn't get upstairs nohow, so I just lay down on the bricks to rest myself a bit. And presently Laura came in, and she was wholly scared to see me, and she said, 'Mother, whatever is the matter?' And I said, 'Gal, I'm reg'lar beat out "".

Three days later the baby was born. What wonder if it is a tiny, blue, wizen-faced little thing, so shrunk and old-looking that one day, when I saw it lying on her lap, I really thought it was dead? It seems to be gradually picking up, however, and is much thought of by the children, though perhaps it will never be such a pet as the bigger baby, Elijah, whom, as Mrs. Allen tells me, they all "think a wonderful lot of, because you know, miss, I lost my little dear child, King, the one who come just afore him, and we jus' as if we couldn't do enough for Elijah".

I could go on to tell many more of her simple tales,-as, for instance, how Jimmy was given a half-crown by his master "for keeping the ship [sheep] well through the harvest", that he might go to the nearest town for the day with it, and how he spent a shilling of the money there in buying a cap for his father, "to keep his head hot on coarse days". Or again, how the father's heart fails him some. times, when he comes home at night, and hears the children-light-hearted as usual-exclaim, "Father, my owd boot's bust out again!" As his wife proudly says, he never "mobs" or "tongue-bangs" his children; but he cannot always refrain from exclaiming,

Booys, I b'lieve you tears they boots out o' puppose!" However, he resigns himself to his fate, sends out for "a penn'orth o' tipnails" and some "hob-irons", and sets to work to nail on afresh the tips and heels of the ragged old boots.

Enough, however, has been told to give you some idea of the hard-working,

hard-faring life of this man, to bring before you the noble, pathetic figure of this woman-noble, in spite of homeliness, uncouthness of speech, rags, and squalor,-pathetic, in its terrible lack of the comforts that we think necessary to make life even tolerable,— pathetic most of all in its utter powerlessness to relieve the many wants of husband and children. A woman's love for her cup of tea is proverbial; she is accustomed to think of that as a simple necessary of life, without which she could hardly exist, much less do hard work. Think of the two ounces of tea which has to last out the week- -as the only drink, rememberin this family of nine; and the heart of every woman amongst us must surely ache with pity as we picture this poor woman sitting down day after day to a cup of coloured water, unsoftened even by milk, and sweetened with sugar, nearer black than brown, at three halfpence per pound! And yet I believe that Mrs. Allen would rather claim your pity for the distress which sometimes overcomes her as she thinks of her husband-that "good, still man "-working day after day in the broiling sun (and the sun and the work together are a severe tax upon the strength of the best-fed labourer in our harvest-fields), with nothing to "take to" but dry bread, and a little weak home - brewed beer. "Bound like a wukhus child "-yes, she knows he is, and all her labours, all her privations, cannot loose him; there, 1 believe, is the most poignant grief of all. What must have been her feelings when, as happened the winter before last, the fiat went forth that for a month or two there would be only four days' work-ah! and four days' pay-for all the men who worked on those farms, must be left to my readers' imagination.

I have, no doubt, chosen a somewhat exceptional case, for all labourers are not shall I say blessed with so large a family; and but for the fact that the eldest girl is physically unfit, she ought of course to be at least support

ing herself by this time. But I could point out many other families in the same parish where there are from six to nine children. One qualification for the Christmas gift of coal is five children under thirteen or four under ten, and many have been the families who could claim it under this head. Fancy having to house, feed, and clothe the father and mother, and four, or even three, little ones who cannot earn a penny for themselves, with wages ten shillings a week; and if you do not give up the problem in despair, it will only be because you have seen the thing done-or, shall we say, attempted ?-in cottages such as I was in only the other day, where there were six little ones under nine.

Can you wonder if some of our young men do not exactly relish the prospect of leading the life which their fathers have led, with no prospect before them but the workhouse (for how can they save on wages such as these?), if they try whether better luck may not befall them in our crowded cities? True, their want of prudence, their early marriages, their neglect to save when they are earning men's wages and as yet have only themselves to keep, have something to do with the poverty which will pinch them so sorely in later life if they settle down in the country; but with wages ten shillings a week, when would it be safe-when would it be prudent for a man to marry? Weak human nature wants to see a chance of safety before it will condescend to prudence; and where is that chance for an agricultural labourer ?

Whether we may look for a brighter day to dawn-in what direction we may turn for help-must be left to wiser heads than mine. Perhaps the agricultural interest has sunk to its

lowest; perhaps things will begin to look up again, and the old order may yet bring moderate comfort and contentment to our cottage homes. Or perhaps, on the other hand, great changes will have to be slowly made; perhaps, as I incline to believe, the salvation of the labourer is to be found in the gradual transference to him of part of the land on which he works, so that each, if he desires and proves worthy of it, may have something to hope for, something to work forfinally, something to call his own. If this be so, we may hope that the present distress is temporary only, and may do what we can to give temporary relief. These poor people must suffer— there is no effectual help for it; for all things connected with the land are at a very low ebb. Both landlords and farmers are hampered by their losses; gentlemen's houses are shut up; parish after parish which I could name has no gentleman's family in it but the clergyman's. In many cases the great reduction in his tithe has brought him also into hard and bitter straits, so that he, his people's only friend, cannot do to help them what he would; though indeed I believe, and know, that the records of many a quiet country parson's life would tell of many a sacrifice, many a burden, many an anxiety as to his own ways and means, willingly and cheerfully borne for the sake of the flock whom he cannot desert in bodily, any more than in spiritual need. For him and for his people I claim some of the sympathy which is so readily accorded to the suffering poor of London-which will be accorded to their country brethren, I am confident, when once their hardships, their patience, and their heroism have been made known.

I HAVE before me a small book-a very small one-which I bought a few days ago at Hodgson's auctionroomsin Chancery Lane, rooms devoted, as the reader probably knows, exclusively to the sale of books. It was one of a lot of thirteen odd volumes which lay on the lowest shelf in the least accessible corner of the rooma bundle half buried in dust and pinched by coarse string; elbowed, too, in its disgrace by a score of similar lots, each more dingy and worm-eaten, more shamelessly out at backs and corners, than its neighbour. Yet there was some bidding for this particular lot, No. 718 in the catalogue. It had been examined.

More eyes

than mine had espied a neat whole book or two between the grimy fastenings; and had anticipated-fondly, no doubt the change which a little dusting and wiping and some judicious banging might produce upon calf that was fairly sound, and old gold edges that still gleamed soberly. At any rate there was bidding for this bundle. Lots 716 and 717 went for eighteen-pence apiece; but Lot 718 rose to five-and-six-six shillingsseven shillings! and at last was knocked down to me for seven-andsixpence.

What

Perhaps I should do well to pass over in silence the twelve nondescripts which went to complete my baker's dozen; make weights hastily examined and quickly laid aside. But considering them pitifully, I relent. reverence is not due to old books? To all surely, then to these. They have lain—their fly-pages tell of it-year in and year out on the window-seats of quiet Lancashire manor-houses, among the rods and otter-spears perchance; they have gone up to rooms at Merton or Christchurch, in Master Tom's saddle-bags, or in the boot of

the Swiftsure. Generations of boys and men have pored over their pages; have cried over them, and laughed over them, ay, and have scrawled in them. They have been given "to P. G. by his kind friend, Laura W.", by Tom to Dick, and by Dick to Harry. They are, some of them, more than two centuries old; they came to England, some of them, before the Hanover rat. They cost much money in their day. This tiny "Cæsar", for instance, now light and worm-eaten, arrived at the last stage of sapless old age, once cost a pretty penny; possibly its present weight in gold, for it only turns the balance at three ounces and a half-a

feather-weight for a book. It was printed at Amsterdam in 1630. One thing they all have in common-shabbiness. From the outside they all look mere rubbish; all are in the last stages of old age, some of decay. But how well they have done their work. Some time, too, our collections will go up at Hodgson's to be sold. Lucky shall we be, then, if we have done our work in the world so well as these odd volumes. One of them falls open as I toss it aside, and discloses a yellow time-stained book-plate. There is a motto on it; surely the most appropriate motto that ever lurked in a second-hand book. It might be set up over the doorway of Hodgson's; for by a strange coincidence it is the sad, Fuimus.

And this thirteenth volume which remains in my hand? I retain it because I find that when the oldest of those I have enumerated, the "Cæsar", was born, this book was already sixand-fifty years old. It came into the world at Antwerp in 1574; two years, that is to say, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris, and two years before the Spanish Fury at Antwerp, and so in the very crisis of the

In a measure, too, it is typical itself of this. It was printed in the Netherlands, the country so long hotly debated by both parties, contested on one side by the Spanish, on the other by Dutch, English, and French. Then merely as a Testament it speaks for the Reformation; but, inasmuch as its licenser was Philip of Spain, Philip of the Inquisition, it represents Rome. Further, its printer was-or in his lifetime was accused of being-a heretic; yet he was chief printer of the Scriptures to the Catholic King!

It is not valuable: I do not know that it is particularly rare; but it is three hundred and fourteen years old. Since it came from the press fifteen sovereigns have reigned in England. There have been two Revolutions of a kind, three if not four Civil Wars of a kind, and Reform Bills without number. The English Constitution, which we boast so stable-well, it is not what it was. But this little book, three inches high by one and threequarters wide, by one thick-this frail congeries of paper with the stout calf covers dyed by time to the colour of an old saddle, and the 610 pages 610 to three-quarters of an inch mind! -is little changed, is scarce a whit the worse. Time has swallowed the ten generations which have bent over its pages, but has found the book itself too tough a morsel-a quaint illustration of the proverb, Littera scripta manet.

It is, I have said, a Greek Testament. It bears on its title-page a statement in Latin that it was printed

at Antwerp in the workshop of Christopher Plantin, chief printer to the King, in the year 1574. And the title-p -page is further embellished with Plantin's famous trade-mark, a hand issuing from clouds and grasping a pair of compasses, surrounded by the motto, Labore et Constantia; the fixed leg of the compasses representing the latter, the revolving the former,-so it is said.

This Christopher Plantin has been much talked about of late; and with some reason seeing that he was one of the greatest printers of the sixteenth century. By birth a Frenchman, he settled in Antwerp about the year 1550; and having obtained, as is thought, some of the types of the Bombergs-notable printers before him he set himself to produce books of the first class. He worked for art's sake and this makes him the more interesting-for the love of the beautiful rather than for money; many of his greatest works, such as the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, which he published for the King of Spain, being brought out at a great loss. Owing to this leading feature in his character he was all his life through in pecuniary straits. Nor were these his only troubles. Once at least he was fined and mulcted in all his plans for the publication of an heretical book; and it is certain that some very strange productions issued from his press along with the missals and liturgies it was his business to print. He belonged, it is now supposed, to a "strange mystical sect of heretics," then numerous in the Low Countries. Yet notwithstanding these suspicions and troubles, he gained and kept the favour of Philip the Second of Spain, who appointed him his Architypographus Regius, or "Censor of Printers to his Majesty," and granted him the sole right of printing liturgical works. When Antwerp was sacked by the Spanish in 1576, Plantin had to redeem his property by a great ransom, and for a time carried on his chief business at Leyden. But he

city of his choice in 1589. His descendants carried on his business for two centuries after his death and entered into the fruit of his labour, making a large fortune out of the monopoly which he had won from the Spanish King. In 1876 their oldfashioned printing-house, with its unique types and library, was bought by the municipality of Antwerp at the price of nearly 50,000l., and is preserved as a museum, now considered one of the most interesting objects in the city.

In the year 1574, then, this little book was lying in the old printer's house at Antwerp-on a window-ledge behind the small diamond panes perhaps, or more likely locked away in some iron-bound chest in an inner room-waiting for a purchaser. Who was the customer, we wonder, who bore it off? The book is silent; but we can amuse ourselves by considering who may have bought it. The knowledge of Greek was confined to a few then, and those chiefly the wealthy. Such volumes as this were probably within the reach only of the rich, of princes, nobles, and great merchants, or scholars of eminence with States for patrons; and these last would probably prefer a folio edition, so that we may not unreasonably look to find the purchaser of this pocket-volume in some learned soldier. Don Luis de Requesens y Cuniga, Grand Commander of Castile, a blue-blooded hidalgo, lately Constable of Milan, was in the year 1574 Governor of the Netherlands; he may have turned its pages. Or Don Sancho d'Avila, Captain of Antwerp Citadel in that year; a pattern Castilian so proud, that when the time came for another to succeed him, he would not condescend personally to deliver up his trust, but deputed an inferior to perform the thankless office. Or, if it chanced that the book was not sold at once but lay in stock a while, we can picture Don John of Austria, son of the late Emperor and hero of Lepanto, a

whose veins ran the mad blood of Charles the Bold of Burgundy-we can picture him toying with its covers, and commending it on some idle visit such as the greatest might pay to the warehouse of the King's Printer. Or a certain one-armed man, almost forgotten in our day, though then his name was a household word wherever two Protestants met together, may have come into the shop under guard and admired the text of this little book, or smiled gravely at its quaint head-letters. His name was Francis de la Nöue, but he was as often called "Bras de Fer, Iron Arm"; and some styled him the "Bayard of the Huguenots". He was the friend of Coligny and Chatillon and Navarre, and of all that was noblest in France, being himself a knightly cultured gentleman. He acted for a time as Lieutenant-General of the Dutch forces; and for years afterwards was Philip of Spain's prisoner. Or another great man-yet a man very unlike him-may have deigned to glance at it. I mean Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma. Does not his very name still speak to the senses of medieval pomp and magnificence, of Spanish valour, and Italian luxury, and Flemish wealth, and German will? In fact he had a strain of each of these races in him. He was the grandson of an Emperor, the great-grandson of a Pope, a great diplomatist and a greater general. It was this same Alexander of Parma, be it remembered, who looked to be king, or at least viceroy of England, and for weeks strode the dunes of Dunkirk, waiting until the Armada should sweep the Dutch and English from the seas. He was an arrogant and imperious man: a liar, too, like all the diplomatists of the time; but still a man. For we read that dying at forty-six, dying after all his successes and triumphs dropsical and gouty, he had himself up to the very last morning of his life lifted on horseback, that he might ride through his troops; and