Don Jose de Salamanca, the great railway contractor of Spain, was, in
the early part of his life, a student at the University of Granada. He
there wore, as he himself says, the oldest and most worn of cassocks. He
was a diligent student; and after leaving college he became a member of
the Spanish press. From thence he was translated to the Cabinet of Queen
Christina, of which he became Finance Minister. This brought out his
commercial capacities, and induced him to enter on commercial
speculations. He constructed railways in Spain and Italy, and took the
principal share in establishing several steam-shipping companies. But
while pursuing commerce, he did not forget literature. Once a week he
kept an open table, to which the foremost men in literature and the
press were invited. They returned his hospitality by inviting him to a
dinner on the most economic scale. Busts of Shakespeare, Cervantes,
Dante, Schiller, and other literary men, adorned the room.

In returning thanks for his health, Salamanca referred to his university
experience, and to his labours in connection with the press. "Then," he
went on to say, "the love of gold took possession of my soul, and it was
at Madrid that I found the object of my adoration; but not, alas!
without the loss of my juvenile illusions. Believe me, gentlemen, the
man who can satisfy all his wishes has no more enjoyment. Keep to the
course you have entered on, I advise you. Rothschild's celebrity will
expire on the day of his death. Immortality can be earned, not bought.
Here are before us the effigies of men who have gloriously cultivated
liberal arts; their busts I have met with in every part of Europe; but
nowhere have I found a statue erected to the honour of a man who has
devoted his life to making money."

Riches and happiness have no necessary connection with each other. In
some cases it might be said that happiness is in the inverse proportion
to riches. The happiest part of most men's lives is while they are
battling with poverty, and gradually raising themselves above it. It is
then that they deny themselves for the sake of others,--that they save
from their earnings to secure a future independence,--that they
cultivate their minds while labouring for their daily bread,--that they
endeavour to render themselves wiser and better--happier in their homes
and more useful to society at large. William Chambers, the Edinburgh
publisher, speaking of the labours of his early years, says, "I look
back to those times with great pleasure, and I am almost sorry that I
have not to go through the same experience again; for I reaped more
pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket, studying in a garret in
Edinburgh, than I now find when sitting amidst all the elegancies and
comforts of a parlour."

There are compensations in every condition of life. The difference in
the lot of the rich and the poor is not so great as is generally
imagined. The rich man has often to pay a heavy price for his
privileges. He is anxious about his possessions. He may be the victim of
extortion. He is apt to be cheated. He is the mark for every man's
shaft. He is surrounded by a host of clients, till his purse bleeds at
every pore. As they say in Yorkshire when people become rich, the money
soon "broddles through." Or, if engaged in speculation, the rich man's
wealth may fly away at any moment. He may try again, and then wear his
heart out in speculating on the "chances of the market." _Insomnia_ is a
rich man's disease. The thought of his winnings and losings keeps him
sleepless. He is awake by day, and awake by night. "Riches on the brain"
is full of restlessness and agony.

The rich man over-eats or over-drinks; and he has gout. Imagine a man
with a vice fitted to his toe. Let the vice descend upon the joint, and
be firmly screwed down. Screw it again. He is in agony. Then suddenly
turn the screw tighter--down, down! That is gout! Gout--of which
Sydenham has said, that "unlike any other disease, it kills more rich
men than poor, more wise than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals,
admirals, and philosophers, have died of gout. Hereby nature shows her
impartiality, since those whom she favours in one way, she afflicts in
another Or, the rich man may become satiated with food, and lose his
appetite; while the poor man relishes and digests anything. A beggar
asked alms of a rich man "because he was hungry." "Hungry?" said the
millionaire; "how I envy you!" Abernethy's prescription to the rich man
was, "Live upon a shilling a day, and earn it!" When the Duke of York
consulted him about his health, Abernethy's answer was, "Cut off the
supplies, and the enemy will soon leave the citadel." The labourer who
feels little and thinks less, has the digestion of an ostrich; while the
non-worker is never allowed to forget that he has a stomach, and is
obliged to watch every mouthful that he eats. Industry and indigestion
are two things seldom found united.

Many people envy the possessions of the rich, but will not pass through
the risks, the fatigues, or the dangers of acquiring them. It is related
of the Duke of Dantzic that an old comrade, whom he had not seen for
many years, called upon him at his hotel in Paris, and seemed amazed at
the luxury of his apartments, the richness of his furniture, and the
magnificence of his gardens. The Duke, supposing that he saw in his old
comrade's face a feeling of jealousy, said to him bluntly, "You may have
all that you see before you, on one condition." "What is that?" said his
friend. "It is that you will place yourself twenty paces off, and let me
fire at you with a musket a hundred times." "I will certainly not accept
your offer at that price." "Well," replied the Marshal, "to gain all
that you see before you, I have faced more than a thousand gunshots,
fired at not move than ten paces off."

The Duke of Marlborough often faced death. He became rich, and left a
million and a half to his descendants to squander. The Duke was a
penurious man. He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four
candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a
conference before the battle of Blenheim. Swift said of the Duke, "I
dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose
his baggage." But this merely showed his consummate generalship. When
ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to
his lodgings, to save sixpence. And yet this may be excused, for he may
have walked home for exercise. He is certainly known to have given a
thousand pounds to a young and deserving soldier who wished to purchase
a commission. When Bolingbroke was reminded of one of the weaknesses of
Marlborough, he observed, "He was so great a man, that I forgot that he
had that defect."

It is no disgrace to be poor. The praise of honest poverty has often
been sung. When a man will not stoop to do wrong, when he will not sell
himself for money, when he will not do a dishonest act, then his poverty
is most honourable. But the man is not poor who can pay his way, and
save something besides. He who pays cash for all that he purchases, is
not poor but well off. He is in a happier condition than the idle
gentleman who runs into debt, and is clothed, shod, and fed at the
expense of his tailor, shoemaker, and butcher. Montesquieu says, that a
man is not poor because he has nothing, but he is poor when he will not
or cannot work. The man who is able and willing to work, is better off
than the man who possesses a thousand crowns without the necessity for
working.

Nothing sharpens a man's wits like poverty. Hence many of the greatest
men have originally been poor men. Poverty often purifies and braces a
man's morals. To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most
delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are
brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but
in proportion to their smallness of means. And the best are often the
poorest,--always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their
temporal wants. A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He
has not created misery. And there is certainly a great difference
between the two. While honest poverty is honourable, misery is
humiliating; inasmuch as the latter is for the most part the result of
misconduct, and often of idleness and drunkenness. Poverty is no
disgrace to him who can put up with it; but he who finds the beggar's
staff once get warm in his hand, never does any good, but a great amount
of evil.

The poor are often the happiest of people--far more so than the rich;
but though they may be envied, no one will be found willing to take
their place. Moore has told the story of the over-fed, over-satisfied
eastern despot, who sent a messenger to travel through the world, in
order to find out the happiest man. When discovered, the messenger was
immediately to seize him, take his shirt off his back, and bring it to
the Caliph. The messenger found the happiest man in an Irishman,--happy,
dancing, and flourishing his shillelagh. But when the ambassador
proceeded to seize him, and undress him, he found that the Irishman had
got no shirt to his back!

The portion of Agur is unquestionably the best: "Remove far from me
vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food
convenient for me." The unequal distribution of the disposition to be
happy, is of far greater importance than the unequal distribution of
wealth. The disposition to be content and satisfied, said David Hume, is
at least equal to an income of a thousand a year. Montaigne has observed
that Fortune confers but little. Human good or ill does not depend upon
it. It is but the seed of good, which the soul, infinitely stronger than
wealth, changes and applies as it pleases, and is thus the only cause of
a happy or unhappy disposition.

England is celebrated for its charities. M. Guizot declares that there
is nothing in this land that so fills the mind of the stranger with
amazement at our resources, and admiration at our use of them, as the
noble free-gift monuments raised on every side for the relief of
multiform suffering. The home philanthropist, who looks a little deeper
than the foreign visitor, may be disposed to take another view of the
effects of money-giving. That charity produces unmixed good, is very
much questioned. Charity, like man, is sometimes blind, and frequently
misguided. Unless money is wisely distributed, it will frequently do
more harm than good. If charity could help or elevate the poor, London
would now be the happiest city in the world; for about three millions of
money are spent on charity, and about one in every three of the London
population are relieved by charitable institutions.

It is very easy to raise money for charity. Subscription lists
constantly attest the fact. A rich man is asked by some influential
person for money. It is very easy to give it. It saves time to give it.
It is considered a religious duty to give it. Yet to give money
unthinkingly, to give it without considering how it is to be
used,--instead of being for the good of our fellow-creatures,--may often
prove the greatest injury we could inflict upon them. True benevolence
does not consist in giving money. Nor can charitable donations, given
indiscriminately to the poor, have any other effect than to sap the
foundations of self-respect, and break down the very outworks of virtue
itself. There are many forms of benevolence which create the very evils
they are intended to cure, and encourage the poorer classes in the habit
of dependence upon the charity of others,--to the neglect of those far
healthier means of social well-being which lie within their own reach.

One would think that three million a year were sufficient to relieve all
the actual distress that exists in London. Yet the distress,
notwithstanding all the money spent upon it, goes on increasing. May not
the money spent in charity, create the distress it relieves,--besides
creating other distress which it fails to relieve? Uneducated and idle
people will not exert themselves for a living, when they have the hope
of obtaining the living without exertion. Who will be frugal and
provident, when charity offers all that frugality and providence can
confer? Does not the gift of the advantages, comforts, and rewards of
industry, without the necessity of labouring for them, tend to sap the
very foundations of energy and self-reliance? Is not the circumstance
that poverty is the only requisite qualification on the part of the
applicant for charity, calculated to tempt the people to
self-indulgence, to dissipation, and to those courses of life which keep
them poor?

Men who will not struggle and exert themselves, are those who are helped
first. The worst sort of persons are made comfortable: whilst the
hard-working, self-supporting man, who disdains to throw himself upon
charity, is compelled to pay rates for the maintenance of the idle.
Charity stretches forth its hand to the rottenest parts of society; it
rarely seeks out, or helps, the struggling and the honest. As Carlyle
has said, "O my astonishing benevolent friends! that never think of
meddling with the material while it continues sound; that stress and
strain it with new rates and assessments, till even it has given way and
declared itself rotten; whereupon you greedily snatch at it, and say,
'Now let us try to do some good upon it!'"

The charity which merely consists in giving, is an idle
indulgence--often an idle vice. The mere giving of money will never do
the work of philanthropy. As a recent writer has said, "The crimes of
the virtuous, the blasphemies of the pious, and the follies of the wise,
would scarcely fill a larger volume than the cruelties of the humane. In
this world a large part of the occupation of the wise has been to
neutralize the efforts of the good."

"Public charities," said the late Lord Lytton, "are too often merely a
bonus to public indolence and vice. What a dark lesson of the fallacy of
human wisdom does this knowledge strike into the heart! What a waste of
the materials of kindly sympathies! What a perversion individual
mistakes can cause, even in the virtues of a nation! Charity is a
feeling dear to the pride of the human heart--it is an aristocratic
emotion! Mahomet testified his deep knowledge of his kind when he
allowed the vice hardest to control,--sexual licentiousness; and
encouraged the virtue easiest to practise,--charity."[1]

[Footnote 1: LORD LYTTON--_England and the English_, p. 124.]

There are clergymen in London who say that charity acts against the
extension of religion amongst the people. The Rev. Mr. Stone says, "He
is an unwelcome visitor to the poor who brings the Bible in one hand,
without a loaf, a blanket, or a shilling in the other. And no wonder. By
the prevailing system of charitable relief they have been _nursed_ in
this carnal spirit; they have been justified in those selfish
expectations. Instead of being allowed to learn the great and salutary
lesson of providence, that there is a necessary connection between their
conduct and their condition, they have, by this artificial system, been
taught that indigence is _of itself_ sufficient to constitute a claim to
relief. They have been thus encouraged in improvidence, immorality,
fraud, and hypocrisy."

The truest philanthropists are those who endeavour to prevent misery,
dependence, and destitution; and especially those who diligently help
the poor to help themselves. This is the great advantage of the
"Parochial Mission-Women Association."[1] They bring themselves into
close communication with the people in the several parishes of London,
and endeavour to assist them in many ways. But they avoid giving
indiscriminate alms. Their objects are "to help the poor to help
themselves, and to raise them by making them feel that they _can_ help
themselves." There is abundant room for philanthropy amongst all
classes; and it is most gratifying to find ladies of high distinction
taking part in this noble work.

[Footnote 1: See _East and West_, edited by the Countess Spencer.]

There are numerous other societies established of late years, which
afford gratifying instances of the higher and more rational, as well as
really more Christian, forms of charity. The societies for improving the
dwellings of the industrial classes,--for building baths and
washhouses,--for establishing workmen's, seamen's, and servants'
homes,--for cultivating habits of providence and frugality amongst the
working-classes,--and for extending the advantages of knowledge amongst
the people,--are important agencies of this kind. These, instead of
sapping the foundations of self-reliance, are really and truly helping
the people to help themselves, and are deserving of every approbation
and encouragement. They tend to elevate the condition of the mass; they
are embodiments of philanthropy in its highest form; and are calculated
to bear good fruit through all time.

Rich men, with the prospect of death before them, are often very much
concerned about their money affairs. If unmarried and without
successors, they find a considerable difficulty in knowing what to do
with the pile of gold they have gathered together during their lifetime.
They must make a will, and leave it to somebody. In olden times, rich
people left money to pay for masses for their souls. Perhaps many do so
still. Some founded almshouses; others hospitals. Money was left for the
purpose of distributing doles to poor persons, or to persons of the same
name and trade as the deceased.

"These doles," said the wife of a clergyman in the neighbourhood of
London, "are doing an infinite deal of mischief: they are rapidly
pauperising the parish." Not long since, the town of Bedford was
corrupted and demoralized by the doles and benefactions which rich men
had left to the poorer classes. Give a man money without working for it,
and he will soon claim it as a right. It practically forbids him to
exercise forethought, or to provide against the vicissitudes of trade,
or the accidents of life. It not only breaks down the bulwarks of
independence, but the outposts of virtue itself.

Large sums of money are left by rich men to found "Charities." They wish
to do good, but in many cases they do much moral injury. Their
"Charities" are anything but charitable. They destroy the self-respect
of the working-classes, and also of the classes above them. "We can get
this charity for nothing. We can get medical assistance for nothing. We
can get our children educated for nothing. Why should we work? Why
should we save?" Such is the idea which charity, so-called, inculcates.
The "Charitable Institution" becomes a genteel poor-house; and the
lesson is extensively taught that we can do better by begging than by
working.

The bequeathment of Stephen Girard, the wealthy American merchant, was
of a different character. Girard was a native of Bordeaux. An orphan at
an early age, he was put on board a ship as a cabin boy. He made his
first voyage to North America when about ten or twelve years old. He had
little education, and only a limited acquaintance with reading and
writing. He worked hard. He gradually improved in means so that he was
able to set up a store. Whilst living in Water Street, New York, he fell
in love with Polly Luna, the daughter of a caulker. The father forbade
the marriage. But Girard persevered, and at length he won and married
Polly Lum. It proved a most unfortunate marriage. His wife had no
sympathy with him; and he became cross, snappish, morose. He took to sea
again; and at forty he commanded his own sloop, and was engaged in the
coasting trade between New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.

Then he settled in Philadelphia, and became a merchant. He devoted his
whole soul to his business; for he had determined to become rich. He
practised the most rigid economy. He performed any work by which money
could be made. He shut his heart against the blandishments of life. The
desire for wealth seems to have possessed his soul. His life was one of
unceasing labour. Remember, that Girard was unhappy at home. His nature
might have been softened, had he been blessed with a happy wife. He led
ten miserable years with her; and then she became insane. She lay for
about twenty years in the Pennsylvania hospital, and died there.

Yet there was something more than hardness and harshness in Girard.
There was a deep under-current of humanity in him. When the yellow fever
broke out in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself. The
people were smitten to death by thousands. Nurses could not be found to
attend the patients in the hospital. It was regarded as certain death to
nurse the sick.

"Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor;
But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;
Only, alas I the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants,
Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless."

It was at this time, when many were stricken with fever, that Girard
abandoned his business, and offered his services as superintendent of
the public hospital. He had Peter Helm for his associate. Girard's
business faculty immediately displayed itself. His powers of
organization were immense, and the results of his work were soon
observed. Order began to reign where everything had before been in
confusion. Dirt was conquered by cleanliness. Where there had been
wastefulness, there was now thriftiness. Where there had been neglect,
there was unremitting attention. Girard saw that every case was properly
attended to. He himself attended to the patients afflicted by the
loathsome disease, ministered to the dying, and performed the last kind
offices for the dead. At last the plague was stayed; and Girard and Helm
returned to their ordinary occupations.

The visitors of the poor in Philadelphia placed the following minute on
their books: "Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, members of the committee,
commiserating the calamitous state to which the sick may probably be
reduced for want of suitable persons to superintend the hospital,
voluntarily offered their services for that benevolent employment, and
excited a surprise and satisfaction that can be better conceived than
expressed."

The results of Stephen Girard's industry and economy may be seen in
Philadelphia--in the beautiful dwelling houses, row after row,--but more
than all, in the magnificent marble edifice of Girard College. He left
the greater part of his fortune for public purposes,--principally to
erect and maintain a public library and a large orphanage. It might have
been in regard to his own desolate condition, when cast an orphan
amongst strangers and foreigners, that he devised his splendid charity
for poor, forlorn, and fatherless children. One of the rooms in the
college is singularly furnished. "Girard had directed that a suitable
room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books and papers;
but from excess of pious care, or dread of the next-of kin, all the
plain homely man's effects were shovelled into this room. Here are his
boxes and his bookcase, his gig and his gaiters, his pictures and his
pottery; and in a bookcase, hanging with careless grace, are his
braces--old homely knitted braces, telling their tale of simplicity and
carefulness."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_, April. 1875. George Dawson on
"Niagara and Elsewhere."]

One of the finest hospitals in London is that founded by Thomas Guy, the
bookseller. He is said to have been a miser. At all events he must have
been a thrifty and saving man. No foundation such as that of Guy's can
be accomplished without thrift. Men who accomplish such things must deny
themselves for the benefit of others. Thomas Guy appears early to have
projected schemes of benevolence. He first built and endowed almshouses
at Tamworth for fourteen poor men and women, with pensions for each
occupant; and with a thoughtfulness becoming his vocation, he furnished
them with a library. He had himself been educated at Tamworth, where he
had doubtless seen hungry and homeless persons suffering from cleanness
of teeth and the winter's rage; and the almshouses were his contribution
for their relief. He was a bookseller in London at that time. Guy
prospered, not so much by bookselling, as by buying and selling South
Sea Stock. When the bubble burst, he did not hold a share: but he had
realized a profit of several hundred thousand pounds. This sum he
principally employed in building and endowing the hospital which bears
his name. The building was roofed in before his death, in 1724.

Scotch benefactors for the most part leave their savings for the purpose
of founding hospitals for educational purposes. There was first the
Heriot's Hospital, founded in Edinburgh by George Heriot, the goldsmith
of James I., for maintaining and educating a hundred and eighty boys.
But the property of the hospital having increased in value--the New Town
of Edinburgh being for the most part built on George Heriot's land--the
operations of the charity have been greatly extended; as many as four
thousand boys and girls being now educated free of expense, in different
parts of the city. There are also the George Watson's Hospital, the John
Watson's Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, two Maiden Hospitals, the
Cauven's Hospital, the Donaldson's Hospital, the Stewart's Hospital, and
the splendid Fettes College (recently opened),--all founded by Scottish
benefactors for the ordinary education of boys and girls, and also for
their higher education. Edinburgh may well be called the City of
Educational Endowments. There is also the Madras College, at St.
Andrews, founded by the late Andrew Bell, D.D.; the Dollar Institution,
founded by John Macrat; and the Dick Bequest, for elevating the
character and position of the parochial schools and schoolmasters, in
the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray. The effects of this last
bequest have been most salutary. It has raised the character of the
education given in the public schools, and the results have been
frequently observed at Cambridge, where men from the northern counties
have taken high honours in all departments of learning.

English benefactors have recently been following in the same direction.
The Owen's College at Manchester; the Brown Library and Museum at
Liverpool; the Whitworth Benefaction, by which thirty scholarships of
the annual value of ВЈ100 each have been founded for the promotion of
technical instruction; and the Scientific College at Birmingham, founded
by Sir Josiah Mason, for the purpose of educating the rising generation
in "sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge,"--form a
series of excellent institutions which will, we hope, be followed by
many similar benefactions. A man need not moulder with the green grass
over his grave, before his means are applied to noble purposes. He can
make his benefactions while living, and assist at the outset in carrying
out his liberal intentions.

Among the great benefactors of London, the name of Mr. Peabody, the
American banker, cannot be forgotten. It would take a volume to discuss
his merits, though we must dismiss him in a paragraph. He was one of the
first to see, or at all events to make amends for, the houseless
condition of the working classes of London. In the formation of railways
under and above ground, in opening out and widening new streets, in
erecting new public buildings,--the dwellings of the poor were
destroyed, and their occupants swarmed away, no one knew whither.
Perhaps they crowded closer together, and bred disease in many forms.
Societies and companies were formed to remedy the evil to a certain
extent. Sir Sydney Waterlow was one of the first to lead the way, and he
was followed by others. But it was not until Mr. Peabody had left his
splendid benefaction to the poor of London, that any steps could be
taken to deal with the evil on a large and comprehensive scale. His
trustees have already erected ranges of workmen's dwellings in many
parts of the metropolis,--which will from time to time be extended to
other parts. The Peabody dwellings furnish an example of what working
men's dwellings ought to be. They are clean, tidy, and comfortable
homes. They have diminished drunkenness; they have promoted morality.
Mr. Peabody intended that his bounty should "directly ameliorate the
condition and augment the comforts of the poor," and he hoped that the
results would "be appreciated, not only by the present, but by future
generations of the people of London." From all that the trustees have
done, it is clear that they are faithfully and nobly carrying out his
intentions.

All these benefactors of the poor were originally men of moderate means.
Some of them were at one time poor men. Sir Joseph Whitworth was a
journeyman engineer with Mr. Clement, in Southwark, the inventor of the
planing machine. Sir Josiah Mason was by turns a costermonger,
journeyman baker, shoemaker, carpet weaver, jeweller, split-steel ring
maker (here he made his first thousand pounds), steel-pen maker,
copper-smelter, and electro-plater, in which last trade he made his
fortune. Mr, Peabody worked his way up by small degrees, from a clerk in
America to a banker in London. Their benefactions have been the result
of self-denial, industry, sobriety, and thrift.

Benevolence throws out blossoms which do not always ripen into fruit. It
is easy enough to project a benevolent undertaking, but more difficult
to carry it out. The author was once induced to take an interest in a
proposed Navvy's Home; but cold water was thrown upon the project, and
it failed. The navvy workmen, who have made the railways and docks of
England, are a hard-working but a rather thriftless set. They are
good-hearted fellows, but sometimes drunken. In carrying out their
operations, they often run great dangers. They are sometimes so
seriously injured by wounds and fractures as to be disabled for life.
For instance, in carrying out the works of the Manchester, Sheffield,
and Lincolnshire Railway, there were twenty-two cases of compound
fractures seventy-four simple fractures, besides burns from blasts,
severe contusions, lacerations, and dislocations. One man lost both his
eyes by a blast, another had his arm broken by a blast. Many lost their
fingers, feet, legs, and arms; which disabled them for further work.
Knowing the perils to which railway labourers were exposed, it occurred
to a late eminent contractor to adopt some method for helping and
comforting them in their declining years. The subject was brought under
the author's notice by his friend the late Mr. Eborall, in the following
words: "I have just been visiting a large contractor--a man of great
wealth; and he requests your assistance in establishing a 'Navvy's
Home.' You know that many of the contractors and engineers, who have
been engaged in the construction of railways, are men who have
accumulated immense fortunes: the savings of some of them amount to
millions. Well, my friend the contractor not long since found a
miserable, worn-out old man in a ditch by the roadside. 'What,' said he,
'is that you?' naming the man in the ditch by his name. 'Ay,' replied
the man, ''deed it is!' 'What are you doing there?' 'I have come here to
die. I can work no more.' 'Why don't you go to the workhouse? they will
attend to your wants there.' 'No! no workhouse for me! If I am to die, I
will die in the open air.' The contractor recognized in the man one of
his former navvies. He had worked for him and for other contractors many
years; and while they had been making their fortunes, the navvy who had
worked for them had fallen so low as to be found dying in a ditch. The
contractor was much affected. He thought of the numerous other navvies
who must be wanting similar help. Shortly after, he took ill, and during
his illness, thinking of what he might do for the navvies, the idea
occurred to him of founding a 'Navvy's Home;' and he has desired me to
ask you to assist him in bringing out the institution."

It seemed to the author an admirable project, and he consented to do all
that he could for it. But when the persons who were the most likely to
contribute to such an institution were applied to, they threw such
floods of cold water upon it,[1] that it became evident, in the face of
their opposition, that "The Navvy's Home" could not be established. Of
course, excuses were abundant. "Navvies were the most extravagant
workmen. They threw away everything that they earned. They spent their
money on beer, whisky, tally-women, and champagne. If they died in
ditches, it was their own fault. They might have established themselves
in comfort, if they wished to do so. Why should other people provide for
them in old age, more than for any other class of labourers? There was
the workhouse: let them go there." And so on. It is easy to find a stick
to beat a sick dog. As for the original projector, he recovered his
health, he forgot to subscribe for "The Navvy's Home," and the scheme
fell to the ground.

"The devil was sick, the devil a saint would be:
The devil grew well, the devil a saint was he.'

[Footnote 1: With one admirable exception. A noble-hearted man, still
living volunteered a very large subscription towards the establishment
of "the Navvy's Home."]




CHAPTER XV.

HEALTHY HOMES.


"The best security for civilization is the dwelling. "--_B. Disraeli_.

"Cleanliness is the elegance of the poor."--_English Proverb_.

"Sanitas sanitatum, et omnia sanitas."--_Julius Menochius_.

"Virtue never dwelt long with filth and nastiness."--_Count Rumford_.

"More servants wait on Man
Than he'll take notice of: in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan."--_George Herbert_.


Health is said to be wealth. Indeed, all wealth is valueless without
health. Every man who lives by labour, whether of mind or body, regards
health as one of the most valuable of possessions. Without it, life
would be unenjoyable. The human system has been so framed as to render
enjoyment one of the principal ends of physical life. The whole
arrangement, structure, and functions of the human system are
beautifully adapted for that purpose.

The exercise of every sense is pleasurable,--the exercise of sight,
hearing, taste, touch, and muscular effort. What can be more
pleasurable, for instance, than the feeling of entire health,--health,
which is the sum-total of the functions of life, duly performed?
"Enjoyment," says Dr. Southwood Smith, "is not only the end of life, but
it is the only condition of life which is compatible with a protracted
term of existence. The happier a human being is, the longer he lives;
the more he suffers, the sooner he dies. To add to enjoyment, is to
lengthen life; to inflict pain, is to shorten its duration."

Happiness is the rule of healthy existence; pain and misery are its
exceptional conditions. Nor is pain altogether an evil; it is rather a
salutary warning. It tells us that we have transgressed some rule,
violated some law, disobeyed some physical obligation. It is a monitor
which warns us to amend our state of living. It virtually says,--Return
to nature, observe her laws, and be restored to happiness. Thus,
paradoxical though it may seem, pain is one of the conditions of the
physical well-being of man; as death, according to Dr. Thomas Brown, is
one of the conditions of the enjoyment of life.

To enjoy physical happiness, therefore, the natural laws must be
complied with. To discover and observe these laws, man has been endowed
with the gift of reason. Does he fail to exercise this gift,--does he
neglect to comply with the law of his being,--then pain and disease are
the necessary consequence.

Man violates the laws of nature in his own person, and he suffers
accordingly. He is idle and overfeeds himself: he is punished by gout,
indigestion, or apoplexy. He drinks too much: he becomes bloated,
trembling, and weak; his appetite falls off, his strength declines, his
constitution decays; and he falls a victim to the numerous diseases
which haunt the steps of the drunkard.

Society suffers in the same way. It leaves districts undrained, and
streets uncleaned. Masses of the population are allowed to live crowded
together in unwholesome dens, half poisoned by the mephitic air of the
neighbourhood. Then a fever breaks out,--or a cholera, or a plague.
Disease spreads from the miserable abodes of the poor into the
comfortable homes of the rich, carrying death and devastation before it.
The misery and suffering incurred in such cases, are nothing less than
wilful, inasmuch as the knowledge necessary to avert them is within the
reach of all.

Wherever any number of persons live together, the atmosphere becomes
poisoned, unless means be provided for its constant change and
renovation. If there be not sufficient ventilation, the air becomes
charged with carbonic acid, principally the product of respiration.
Whatever the body discharges, becomes poison to the body if introduced
again through the lungs. Hence the immense importance of pure air. A
deficiency of food may be considerably less injurious than a deficiency
of pure air. Every person above fourteen years of age requires about six
hundred cubic feet of shut-up space to breathe in during the twenty-four
hours.[1] If he sleeps in a room of smaller dimensions, he will suffer
more or less, and gradually approach the condition of being smothered.

[Footnote 1: Where six hundred cubic feet of space is allowed, the air
requires to be changed, by ventilation, five times in the hour, in order
to keep it pure. The best amount of space to be allowed for a healthy
adult is about eight hundred cubic feet. The air which is breathed
becomes so rapidly impure, that a constant supply of fresh air must be
kept up to make the air of the shut-up space fit for breathing. The
following are some amounts of space per head which are met with in
practice:--

Artizan rooms                200 cubic feet.
Metropolitan Lodging
Houses                       240   "
Poor Law Board Dormitories   300   "
Barrack Regulation           60    "
The best Hospitals         1,500 to 2,000
                               cubic feet.]

Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by
rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he
will die in the same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole
of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children
born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old,
principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who
was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him
out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived,
and eventually got well. He was cured by the pure air.

The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is
fever. The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the
_fever tax_. It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand
persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die.
Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who
generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence
deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very
heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr.
Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that
the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from
_preventible_ disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than
five millions sterling annually. But this is only the physical and
pecuniary loss. The moral loss is infinitely greater.

Where are now the "happy humble swains" and the "gentle shepherds" of
the old English poets? At the present time, they are nowhere to be
found. The modern Strephon and Phyllis are a very humble pair, living in
a clay-floored cottage, and maintaining a family on from twelve to
fifteen shillings a week. And so far from Strephon spending his time in
sitting by a purling stream playing "roundelays" upon a pipe,--poor
fellow! he can scarcely afford to smoke one, his hours of labour are so
long, and his wages are so small. As for Daphnis, he is a lout, and can
neither read nor write; nor is his Chloe any better.

Phineas Fletcher thus sang of "The Shepherd's Home:"--

"Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state!
  When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate.
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep:
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.'

Where, oh where, has this gentle shepherd gone? Have spinning-jennies
swallowed him up? Alas! as was observed of Mrs. Harris, "there's no such
a person." Did he _ever_ exist? We have a strong suspicion that he never
did, save in the imaginations of poets.

Before the age of railroads and sanitary reformers, the pastoral life of
the Arcadians was a beautiful myth, The Blue Book men have exploded it
for ever. The agricultural labourers have not decent houses,--only
miserable huts, to live in. They have but few provisions for cleanliness
or decency. Two rooms for sleeping and living in, are all that the
largest family can afford. Sometimes they have only one. The day-room,
in addition to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the washing
apparatus, agricultural implements, and dirty clothes. In the sleeping
apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are
indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeps in the same and
only room, which has generally no window,--the openings in the
half-thatched roof admitting light, and exposing the family to every
vicissitude of the weather. The husband, having no comfort at home,
seeks it in the beershop. The children grow up without decency or
self-restraint. As for the half-hearted wives and daughters, their lot
is very miserable.

It is not often that village affairs are made the subject of discussion
in newspapers, for the power of the press has not yet reached remote
country places. But we do hear occasionally of whole villages being
pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them "becoming nests of
beggars' brats." A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess
before a Parliamentary Committee, that he "had pulled down between
twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing,
would have been inhabited by young married couples." And what becomes of
the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left
standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the
workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there
is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.

Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not
sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers
regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the
rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of
manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks
volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their
country's pride."

The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par
with their physical state. Those in the western counties are as little
civilized as the poor people in the east of London. A report of the
Diocesan Board of the county of Hereford states that "a great deal of
the superstition of past ages lingers in our parishes. The observation
of lucky and unlucky days and seasons is by no means unusual; the phases
of the moon are regarded with great respect,--in one, medicine may be
taken, in another it is advisable to kill a pig; over the doors of many
houses may be found twigs placed crosswise, and never suffered to lose
their cruciform position; and the horseshoe preserves its old station on
many a stable-door. Charms are devoutly believed in; a ring made from a
shilling, offered at the communion, is an undoubted cure for fits; hair
plucked from the crop on an ass's shoulder, and woven into a chain, to
be put round a child's neck, is powerful for the same purpose; and the
hand of a corpse applied to the neck is believed to disperse a wen. The
'evil eye,' so long dreaded in uneducated countries, has its terrors
among us; and if a person of ill life be suddenly called away, there are
generally some who hear his 'tokens,' or see his ghost. There exists,
besides, the custom of communicating deaths to hives of bees, in the
belief that they invariably abandon their owners if the intelligence be
withheld."

Sydney Smith has said, with more truth than elegance, that in the
infancy of all nations, even the most civilized, men lived the life of
pigs; and if sanitary reporters had existed in times past as they do
now, we should doubtless have received an account of the actual
existence and domestic accommodation of the old English "swains" and
"shepherds," very different from that given by Phineas Fletcher. Even
the mechanics of this day are more comfortably lodged than the great
landed gentry of the Saxon and Norman periods: and if the truth could be
got at, it would be found that, bad as is the state of our agricultural
labourers now, the condition of their forefathers was no better.

The first method of raising a man above the life of an animal is to
provide him with a healthy home. The Home is after all the best school
for the world. Children grow up into men and women there; they imbibe
their best and their worst morality there; and their morals and
intelligence are in a great measure well or ill trained there. Men can
only be really and truly humanized and civilized through the institution
of the Home. There is domestic purity and moral life in the good home;
and individual defilement and moral death in the bad one. The
schoolmaster has really very little to do with the formation of the
characters of children. These are formed in the home, by the father and
mother,--by brothers, sisters, and companions. It does not matter how
complete may be the education given in schools. It may include the whole
range of knowledge: yet if the scholar is under the necessity of daily
returning to a home which is indecent, vicious, and miserable, all this
learning will prove of comparatively little value. Character and
disposition are the result of home training; and if these are, through
bad physical and moral conditions, deteriorated and destroyed, the
intellectual culture acquired in the school may prove an instrumentality
for evil rather than for good.

The home should not be considered merely as an eating and sleeping
place; but as a place where self-respect may be preserved, and comfort
secured, and domestic pleasures enjoyed. Three-fourths of the petty
vices which degrade society, and swell into crimes which disgrace it,
would shrink before the influence of self-respect. To be a place of
happiness, exercising beneficial influences upon its members,--and
especially upon the children growing up within it,--the home must be
pervaded by the spirit of comfort, cleanliness, affection, and
intelligence. And in order to secure this, the presence of a
well-ordered, industrious, and educated woman is indispensable. So much
depends upon the woman, that we might almost pronounce the happiness or
unhappiness of the home to be woman's work. No nation can advance except
through the improvement of the nation's homes; and these can only be
improved through the instrumentality of women. They must _know_ how to
make homes comfortable; and before they can know, they must have been
taught.

Women must, therefore, have sufficient training to fit them for their
duties in real life. Their education should be conducted throughout,
with a view to their future position as wives, mothers, and housewives.
But amongst all classes, even the highest, the education of girls is
rarely conducted with this object. Amongst the working people, the girls
are sent out to work; amongst the higher classes, they are sent out to
learn a few flashy accomplishments; and men are left to pick from them,
very often with little judgment, the future wives and mothers of
England.

Men themselves attach little or no importance to the intelligence or
industrial skill of women; and they only discover their value when they
find their homes stupid and cheerless. Men are caught by the glance of a
bright eye, by a pair of cherry cheeks, by a handsome figure; and when
they "fall in love," as the phrase goes, they never bethink them of
whether the "loved one" can mend a shirt or cook a pudding. And yet the
most sentimental of husbands must come down from his "ecstatics" so soon
as the knot is tied; and then he soon enough finds out that the clever
hands of a woman are worth far more than her bright glances; and if the
shirt and pudding qualifications be absent, then woe to the unhappy man,
and woe also to the unhappy woman! If the substantial element of
physical comfort be absent from the home, it soon becomes hateful; the
wife, notwithstanding all her good looks, is neglected; and the
public-house separates those whom the law and the Church have joined
together.

Men are really desperately ignorant respecting the home department. If
they thought for a moment of its importance, they would not be so ready
to rush into premature housekeeping. Ignorant men select equally
ignorant women for their wives; and these introduce into the world
families of children, whom they are utterly incompetent to train as
rational or domestic beings. The home is no home, but a mere lodging,
and often a very comfortless one.