could not make up his mind whether the hairy covering of Boz was that of a real, or of a metaphorical Lion, p. 56.

"Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance respecting the fur whereof my coat was made. I am unable to say whether this was the reason, but that coat fascinated him ever afterwards; he usually kept close behind me when I walked, and moved as I moved, that he might look at it the better; and he frequently dived into narrow places after me, at the risk of his life, that he might have the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back and rubbing it the wrong way."

carry

"all

From Worcester, still travelling like a Highland chieftain with his tail on, or a fugitive with a tribe of Indians on his trail, the illustrious stranger railed on to Springfield; but there his voluntary followers were fixed. The Connecticut river being luckily unfrozen, Boz embarked, designedly, as it appears, in a steam-boat of about "half-a-pony power," and altogether so diminutive, that the few passengers the craft would kept in the middle of the deck, lest the boat should unexpectedly tip over." But some buzz about Boz had certainly got before him, for at a small town on the way, the tiny steamer, or rather one of its passengers, was saluted by a gun considerably bigger than the funnel! (p. 174.) At Hartford, however, thanks to the Deaf and Dumb School, the common Gaol, the State Prison, and the Lunatic Asylum, the Dickens enjoyed four quiet days, and then embarked for New York in the New York,

"Infinitely less like a steam-boat than a huge floating bath. I could nardly persuade myself indeed, but that the bathing establishment off Westminster Bridge, which I had left a baby, had suddenly grown to an enormous size; run away from home; and set up in foreign parts for a steamer."

At New York, in the Broadway, an ordinary man may find elbow-room; but Boz is no ordinary man, and accordingly for a little seclusion is glad to pay a visit to the famous Prison called the Tombs. But the mob, the male part at least, again separates, and the gaol visitor ventures forth, as it appears, a little prematurely.

"Once more in Broadway! Here are the same ladies in bright colors,

walking to and fro, in pairs and singly; yonder the very same light blue parasol which passed and repassed the hotel window twenty times while we were sitting there."

Heavens! what a prospect for a modest and a married man! Popularity is no doubt pleasant, and Boz is extremely popular, but popularity in America is no joke. It is not down in the book, but we happen to know, that between 8 and 10 A. M., it was as much as Dickens could do, with Mrs. Dickens's assistance, to write the required autographs. It was more than he could do, between ten and twelve, to even look at the hospitable albums that were willing to take the stranger in. And now, not to forget the blue ladies in the Broadway, and the sulphur-colored parasol, if he should happen to be recognized by yonder group of admirers and well-wishers, he will have, before one could spell temperance, to swallow sangaree, ginsling, a mint julep, a cocktail, a sherry cobbler, and a timber doodle ! In such a case the only resource is in flight, and like a hunted lion, rushing into a difficult and dangerous jungle, Boz plunges at once into the most inaccessible back-slums of New York.

"This is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts at home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?"

But what are "these pigs?" Why, the very swine whence, under the New Tariff, we are to derive American pork and bacon; and accordingly Boz considerately furnishes his countrymen with a sketch of the breed.

"They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are; having for the most part, scanty, brown backs, like the lids of old horse-hair trunks, spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his portrait, nobody would recognize it for a pig's likeness."

No-for they have no choppers.

We know the animals well,

or at least their German cousins and Belgian brothers-in-law; and moreover, have tasted the bacon, which only wants fat to be streaky. But here is a livelier sample of a pig, who seems to have had a notion of Lynch Law.

"As we were riding along this morning, I observed a little incident between two youthful pigs, which were so very human as to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the time, though I dare say in telling, it is tame enough.

"One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations in a dunghill) was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was a pig's whole mass of blood so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard as ever he could go: his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance; and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees, until at last he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother with the mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings. He was no sooner assured of this, and he assured himself so carefully, that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better, than he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail, as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to play tricks with his family any more."

But as usual, Boz was not allowed exclusively to please the pigs; and being hunted all along shore, he was obliged, like a deer fort couru, to take to the water, and was carried to the Long Island Jail, by a boat belonging to the establishment, and rowed by a crew of prisoners "dressed in a striped uniform of black and buff, in which they looked like faded tigers." Not a bad retinue, by the way, for a black and white Lion. In the Gaol, the Madhouse, and the Refuge for the Destitute, he again found a temporary repose, but even these retreats becoming at last uncomfortably crowded, he set off by railway for Philadelphia, with a longing eye, of course, to its Solitary Prison. But that he did not enjoy much unpopularity on this journey, we may guess, when the travelling in the same carriage with Boz was too much PART II.

6

for even Foxite taciturnity, and a Friend made such a desperate effort, as follows, to become an Acquaintance:

"A mild and modest young Quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me, in a grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor-oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational aperient."

The genuine drab color of this anecdote is as true in tone as the tints of Claude, and gives a renewed faith in the artist. The following picture seems equally faithful, though reminding us of some of the Author's fancy pieces. Look at it, gentle reader, and then cry with us, "God forgive the inventor of the system of burying criminals alive in stone coffins!"

"The first man I saw was seated at his loom at work. He had been there six years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence.

"He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a low thoughtful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it noticed and commended. He had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and ends; and his vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked up at it with a good deal of pride, and said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece of oroken glass beside it 'would play music ere long.'

"He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away the time; but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip trembled, and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forgot how it came about, but some allusion was made to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face with his hands.

"But you are resigned now!' said one of the gentlemen, after a short pause, during which he had resumed his former manner.

"Oh yes, oh yes! I am resigned to it.'

"And are a better man, you think?

"Well, I hope so: I'm sure I may be.'

"And time goes pretty quickly?"

"Time is very long, gentlemen, between these four walls!'

"He gazed about him-Heaven only knows how wearily! as he said these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare, as if he

had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and resumed his work."

"On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners the same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified. In every little chamber that I entered, and at every grate through which I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It lives in my memory with the fascination of a remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes a hundred men, with one of them newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would point him out."

*

*

"That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs the bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been there long were deaf."

Of course they were; and all more or less advanced towards a state (to adapt a new word) of idiosyncrasy. Again we say, Heaven forgive the inventors of such a course of slow mental torture! who could reduce a fellow-creature to become such a clock-maker! The truth is, no Solitary System is consonant with humanity or Christianity. Whenever there shall be persons too good for this world, they may have a right to thus excommunicate those who are too bad for it—but as Porson said, not till then!

Nevertheless to a gentleman mobbed, elbowed, jammed, stared at, and shouted after, a few hours in such a quiet hermitage would be a relief: nay, Boz tells us that it was once found endurable for a much longer term, by a voluntary prisoner, who, unable to resist the bottle, applied, as a favor, for a solitary cell. The Board refused, and recommended total abstinence and the long pledge, but the toper, to make sure of temperance, entreated to be put in the stone jug.

"He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest and importunate, that at last they took counsel together, and said, 'He will certainly qualify himself for admission, if we reject him any more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him.' So they made him sign a statement, which would prevent his ever sustaining an action for false imprisonment, to the effect that his in