Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

starry steep of heaven, while the sky bared its blue bosom, and shewed that the silvery clouds still slumbered there as tranquilly as if the Destroying Angel had never thrown his shadow betwixt earth and heaven.

Alas, the sun rose upon a shore strown with wrecks, and blackened with the bodies of the dead! If the eye alighted upon the living, it every where settled upon a group of mourners. Death had gone like a gleaner through the land, and taken an ear from every field. Where before had stood a bed of flowers, one resting upon and supporting another, a bare and open gap was found; and too often the tallest, around which the rest clung, had withered, and fallen and died. The place they had once known " would know them no more for ever." The young bride, before the honeymoon had waned, came forth in her widowed weeds. Their first-born child came too late into the world to look on the face of its father. Sometimes the young mother fell before her infant had seen the light: the opening rose and the unfolded bud perished together. Respectable families fell from a state of comfort to almost naked destitution in a single night, leaving no mark on the steps of the ladder of time, by which men rise and fall, but plunging headlong to the foot of it in a moment. Some had passed many years in faithful servitude, and at last attained the longcoveted promotion. The larger house, so often talked of, was taken; they entered, and so did Death: the father fell, and with him all their hopes for ever perished. Since that day the garden-roller has never been moved, and where the spade was thrust into the ground when the improvements first commenced, there it rests: perchance the robin may alight upon the handle, and there chant his mournful anthem; but one branch is sawn from the overhanging tree that darkened the drawing-room window; all the rest remain untouched, for the workmen have departed. The merry Christmas so often talked of was a mournful meeting within those walls. What at another period would have formed a little history of trial, patient endurance, slow change, and long coming misfortune, was now accomplished almost as soon as one could say It lightens."

66

None knew whence the Destroyer came, nor in what hidden corner he lurked. The Registrar for the district we are describing closes his return for Walworth, for the week ending Sept. 8, 1849, in the following words: "It (the disease) has spread over the whole district-into almost every street-and taken persons of all classes, from the most respectable to the poorest." Men hunted for it in the unhealthy drain, and endeavoured to destroy the unwholesome vapour; they searched for it in what they drank, and hoped to get rid of it by boiling the water; they impregnated the air with lime, and in every

court and alley you passed you inhaled the powerful chloride. Then a change was produced, and the returns of deaths gradually lessened every day; and those who for days and weeks dare not look into a newspaper, for fear of encountering those dark tables of death, were now eager to see the returns, and congratulate their neighbours on the daily decrease. "From the painless nature of the attack," says the same Registrar, "persons seemed to be unconscious how highly necessary it is that immediate attention should be paid to it." Thousands fell through this neglect, who, if the disease had first made its appearance attended by severe pain, would not have lost a single hour without seeking medical aid. Like a flood that slowly úndermines a bank, and which the proprietor regards not when he sees so tiny a current dribbling and oozing through, and scarcely bowing the grass between which it trickles, so came the Destroyerslowly and almost imperceptibly undermining the current of life, and eating out the foundations, until there needed but one mighty rush, and all was over beyond recovery, and the work of destruction was completed. A little precaution would have saved thousands of lives in London alone.

Let us then agitate for pure air and pure water, and break through the monopolies of water and sewer companies, as we would break down the door of a house to rescue some fellow-creature from the flames that raged within. It rests with ourselves to get rid of these evils; and scarcely one in a hundred will be foolhardy enough to oppose the sanitary measures which are already in motion. To aid these proposed improvements, we deemed it our duty to add to the "Picturesque Sketches of London" a brief but faithful description of the dreadful disease which caused almost every street in the metropolis to be hung in mourning.

CHAPTER XXI.

GREENWICH.

B

EAUTIFUL as Greenwich Park is within itself, with its long aisles of overhanging chestnuts, through whose branches the sunlight streams, and throws upon the velvet turf rich chequered rays of green and gold, yet it is the vast view which stretches out on every hand that gives such a charm to the spot. What a glorious prospect opens out from the summit of One-Tree Hill! London, mighty and magnificent, piercing the sky with its high-piled towers, spires, and columns, while St. Paul's, like a mighty giant, heaves up his rounded shoulders as if keeping guard over the outstretched city! Far away the broad bright river rolls along until lost to the eye in the dim green of the fading distance, while its course is still pointed out by the spreading sail, which hangs like a fallen cloud upon the landscape. Along this ancient road of the swans do vessels approach from every corner of the habitable globe, to empty their riches into the great reservoir of London, from whence they are again sent through a thousand channels to the remotest homes in her islands.

About June, Greenwich Park may be seen in all its bloom and beauty; the fine old hawthorns are then generally in full blossom, and the hundreds of gigantic elms and chestnuts are hung in their richest array of summer-green, while here and there the antlered herd cross the shady avenues, or crouched amid what is called the Wilderness, lie half buried in the fan-like fern. The hill above and the plain below are crowded with the gay populace of London, all clothed in their holiday attire, the ladies looking in the distance like a bed of tulips, so rich and varied are the colours of the costume and parasols. At every few yards you meet with a new group, while the long avenue which leads up to Blackheath is one continuous stream of people. On the brow of the hill, and at the front of the Observatory, you see the

old pensioners with their telescopes and glasses of every colour, which seem to give a golden or a purple hue to the landscape, or sometimes to change the scene to that of a country covered with snow.

Some

[graphic]

of these old heroes have lost a leg, others an arm, and yet they go stumping about as happy, to all appearance, as the credulous cockneys whom they delight to cram with an improbable yarn, while they

ONE-TREE HILL.

shoot cannon-balls to a distance which can be compared with nothing except Warner's "long-range.

[ocr errors]

Rare fun is there amongst the younger visitors, as they scramble for the oranges, which are often bountifully rolled down the hills. Off goes the luscious fruit, cantering like a ball of gold along the greensward. It strikes and clears the head of the first youngster who rushes on to catch it: a second misses it, and falls; and it vanishes

[graphic][merged small][subsumed]

somewhere amongst a round dozen of the competitors, who are all tumbling and struggling hicklety-picklety together, like a pack of hounds who are in at the death. Farther on you see a little lovemaking; you can tell by the half-averted head and downcast eyes that the little lady has not yet made up her mind whether to accept the offered arm or not. But see-her boy-lover has purchased some oranges. She accepts one; he sends another down the hill. You hear her clear merry voice ringing out like a silver bell with joyous

« НазадПродовжити »