p on which every kind of filth was
accumulated, for the purpose of being disposed of for manure, so that,
when the poor man opened his narrow habitation in the hope of refreshing
it with the breeze of summer, he was met with a mixture of gases from
reeking dunghills.

This town of Marney was a metropolis of agricultural labour, for the
proprietors of the neighbourhood having for the last half century acted
on the system of destroying the cottages on their estates, in order to
become exempted from the maintenance of the population, the expelled
people had flocked to Marney, where, during the war, a manufactory had
afforded them some relief, though its wheels had long ceased to disturb
the waters of the Mar.

Deprived of this resource, they had again gradually spread themselves
over that land which had as it were rejected them; and obtained from
its churlish breast a niggardly subsistence. Their re-entrance into
the surrounding parishes was viewed with great suspicion; their renewed
settlement opposed by every ingenious contrivance; those who availed
themselves of their labour were careful that they should not become
dwellers on the soil; and though, from the excessive competition, there
were few districts in the kingdom where the rate of wages was more
depressed, those who were fortunate enough to obtain the scant
remuneration, had, in addition to their toil, to endure each morn and
even a weary journey before they could reach the scene of their labour,
or return to the squalid hovel which profaned the name of home. To that
home, over which Malaria hovered, and round whose shivering hearth were
clustered other guests besides the exhausted family of toil--Fever,
in every form, pale Consumption, exhausting Synochus, and trembling
Ague,--returned after cultivating the broad fields of merry England the
bold British peasant, returned to encounter the worst of diseases with
a frame the least qualified to oppose them; a frame that subdued by toil
was never sustained by animal food; drenched by the tempest could not
change its dripping rags; and was indebted for its scanty fuel to the
windfalls of the woods.

The eyes of this unhappy race might have been raised to the solitary
spire that sprang up in the midst of them, the bearer of present
consolation, the harbinger of future equality; but Holy Church at Marney
had forgotten her sacred mission. We have introduced the reader to the
vicar, an orderly man who deemed he did his