hers ugly ones: the bells haunting people in the night (especially the
last of the old year) according to their deeds. And the bells
themselves, who have a goblin likeness to humanity in the midst of their
proper shapes, and who shine in a light of their own, will say (the
Great Bell being the chief spokesman) Who is he that being of the poor
doubts the right of poor men to the inheritance which Time reserves for
them, and echoes an unmeaning cry against his fellows? Toby, all aghast,
will tell him it is he, and why it is. Then the spirits of the bells
will bear him through the air to various scenes, charged with this
trust: That they show him how the poor and wretched, at the worst--yes,
even in the crimes that aldermen put down, and he has thought so
horrible--have some deformed and hunchbacked goodness clinging to them;
and how they have their right and share in Time. Following out the
history of Meg the Bells will show her, that marriage broken off and all
friends dead, with an infant child; reduced so low, and made so
miserable, as to be brought at last to wander out at night. And in
Toby's sight, her father's, she will resolve to drown herself and the
child together. But before she goes down to the water, Toby will see how
she covers it with a part of her own wretched dress, and adjusts its
rags so as to make it pretty in its sleep, and hangs over it, and
smooths its little limbs, and loves it with the dearest love that God
ever gave to mortal creatures; and when she runs down to the water, Toby
will cry 'Oh spare her! Chimes, have mercy on her! Stop her!'--and the
bells will say, 'Why stop her? She is bad at heart--let the bad die.'
And Toby on his knees will beg and pray for mercy: and in the end the
bells will stop her, by their voices, just in time. Toby will see, too,
what great things the punctual man has left undone on the close of the
old year, and what accounts he has left unsettled: punctual as he is.
And he will see a great many things about Richard, once so near being
his son-in-law, and about a great many people. And the moral of it all
will be, that he has his portion in the new year no less than any other
man, and that the poor require a deal of beating out of shape before
their human shape is gone; that even in their frantic wickedness there
may be good in their hearts triumphantly asserting itself, though all
the aldermen alive say 'No,' as he has learnt from the agony of his own
child; and that the