CHAPTER XXXIX.

OUR SURROUNDINGS.

It

THE house, as I have described it, was so far so good. Now for the other side of the picture. We had large blocks of tenement-houses on both sides, and one nearly in front of us. That on our right was very ancient. A low passage led through it to a deep court behind. The whole had been occupied time out of mind by a numerous Irish colony. was a nuisance, and worse. It separated us from the handsome residence of Mr. W. J. Lockett, Copley's friend, of whom I shall have a word to say. Of the tenements on our left my chief recollection is that of a melancholy woman, always at her window looking into our garden, shaking dirty rags of some form or other. The tenements on the other side of the street, belonging to a college-Brasenose, I think were not so ill occupied, but they were an eyesore.

At the foot of our garden ran a brook, little better than a sewer in dry weather, and something more than a flood in wet. It separated us from a little world of dirty courts, alleys, and outhouses, and always suggested malaria. We were a few yards from its confluence with another stream equally liable to inundation, and were between the two streams. A predecessor, it was said, had invited a large party to dinner, and at the appointed hour the dining-room was two feet under water.

ST. JAMES'S LANE.

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We had two ways into the town-one was along the side of the above open brook, in which the black and diffused stream seldom sufficed wholly to cover the stones, the broken pots and pans making the bed. This was 'Brook side.' The other was more direct, by a very narrow, winding, dirty lane, between the stables of an hotel and the Saracen's Head Inn. The sign probably came down from the days when a religious house in the name of St. James possessed the locality, receiving annually two pounds of wax from the corporation, nominally towards the maintenance of St. James's bridge, as it was still called in my time. St. James was the saint of soldiers and the Patron of Spain, for he was a son of thunder and had invoked lightning on his foes. For centuries his work was to drive the Moors out of Spain, and there was not a town in Western Europe that did not annually contribute volunteers to the cause. The Derby 'Saracen's Head' had the same relation to St. James as the London Inn of the name to the adjoining church of St. Sepulchre. The inhabitants of the lane now represented a decadence from that chivalrous period. But I used to like walking through it, for if one was not taken quite back to those times, one was taken a little out of these.

My father once found there a crowd, in the midst of which a woman was giving her husband no doubt what he deserved. The few words my father caught in passing were full of meaning: The de'il owed me a ke-ake, and he guv me a lo-af.' I have always remembered this as a model of free speech upon an imperfect basis,

The people at the 'Saracen's Head' had friends at Bassingham, where our own friends, the Waylands, had charge of the parish, and we used to regard them as country folks.

Tis

I forget when all this began to change. more than sixty years since, and it is now all, not only changed, but in truth passed away. Progress, destruction, or reform, call it which you please, began upon the Irish colony to our right. Our landlord was their ground landlord also, and he had already encroached on their quarters by taking out of them a store-room for our house. He, my father, and Mr. Lockett, all three strong men in their respective ways, put their heads together and resolved to exterminate the colony and divide the ground.

The population resolved to stick to it. Due notice was given, and no notice taken of it. So labourers came, warned the occupants of their danger, planted their ladders, and began the work of destruction from the top. Taking what vantage-ground they could, the garrison pelted them from below. I and my brother watched the struggle from our own roof. The labourers by-and-by were throwing down, not handfuls, but rafters, chimneys, and walls. This work itself was war. But the fight was not ended even when nothing remained between the floor and the sky.

A cart was being loaded with the débris, when the ground was seen to subside under it. The lash was applied to the horse just in time to save it from descending into a yawning abyss. This was a disused and unknown well. The water was found to be quite

A SHOWER OF HAY.

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drinkable, but chalybeate, probably the reason of its disuse. The ground cleared, we put out a bowwindow; Mr. Lockett a spacious wing. A like clearance was effected on our left. Our garden was now much enlarged, and more tastefully laid out.

About this time, one summer's morning, as we stepped into the garden on coming downstairs, a sudden thought possessed us. The air was so soft and so still, we would breakfast al fresco. So the table was brought out and the cloth was laid. Tea had just been poured out, when some one saw a spot on the cloth. 'What's this?' he said, looking closer. It was rain. We still hesitated. In a minute we had to run for shelter, all carrying what we could. It soon became black as night. For three hours-I thought it would never end-it thundered and lightened incessantly. In the midst of it we saw a fall of hay, and looking up saw the sky covered with wreck. A whirlwind had carried off not only a whole field of hay near the 'Depôt,' a mile and a half from us, but even the hedgerows in its path, and was spreading them over the town. My brother John, who was fond of relics, collected some that had fallen in our garden, and preserved them for many years.

The ruinous old wall between our garden and the 'brook' had to be rebuilt. The bricklayers found the bed of the watercourse so much disturbed that they could not make a real foundation. So they just excavated enough for the purpose, and laid down broad heavy planks a little under the water, and upon these built the wall. Several times, upon my mentioning this, I have been told that it is impos

sible. That, however, is my recollection. Often have I asked myself how long the wall would stand, little thinking I should be able to answer the question. On a visit to the site some years ago I found a new wall just completed. The old wall' had begun to 'lean.' On comparing dates, I found it had done its work fifty-two years.

Some years after our family left the house, it became the Mechanics' Institute, and over our moiety of the Irish clearance rose a spacious hall, long the best in Derby-indeed, the only one-for lectures, concerts, and such entertainments. But the house itself is now of the past; so, too, Mr. Lockett's, a much better house. On and around the spot whence I surveyed this changeful world in 1815, there now stands a large group of stately public buildings - Mechanics' Institute, Free Library, Museum, and Picture Gallery. The rooms in which I sat, and ate, and read, and wrote, and talked, after serving as the office of the Church Congress, are thrown into the street. The Stygian stream behind us, never to me unlovely, has wholly disappeared from sunshine, for it is now the Cloaca Maxima of Derby through the whole length of its passage through the town it has been arched over. The portion nearest to us is now one of the finest streets in the town, calling itself the Strand. Where we had to cross it, on our way into the town, is now the Derby post-office. The narrow, winding, dirty lane is now a street worthy of the best parts of London.

The change is not only in dignity and scale; it is indicative of a new era, a new world taking the