In workhouses, pleasantly so-named, because
work cannot be done in them. Twelve-hundred-thousand workers in
England alone; their cunning right-hand lamed, lying idle in their
sorrowful bosom; their hopes, outlooks, share of this fair world,
shut-in by narrow walls. They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of
horrid enchantment; glad to be imprisoned and enchanted, that they may
not perish starved. The picturesque Tourist, in a sunny autumn day,
through this bounteous realm of England, descries the Union Workhouse
on his path. 'Passing by the Workhouse of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire,
on a bright day last autumn,' says the picturesque Tourist, 'I saw
sitting on wooden benches, in front of their Bastille and within their
ring-wall and its railings, some half-hundred or more of these men.
Tall robust figures, young mostly or of middle age; of honest
countenance, many of them thoughtful and even intelligent-looking men.
They sat there, near by one another; but in a kind of torpor,
especially in a silence, which was very striking. In silence: for,
alas, what word was to be said? An Earth all lying round, crying, Come
and till me, come and reap me;--yet we here sit enchanted! In the eyes
and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger,
but of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate distress and
weariness; they returned my glance with a glance that seemed to say,
"Do not look at us. We sit enchanted here, we know not why. The Sun
shines and the Earth calls; and, by the governing Powers and
Impotences of this England, we are forbidden to obey. It is
impossible, they tell us!" There was something that reminded me of
Dante's Hell in the look of all this; and I rode swiftly away.'

So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses: and other hundred
thousands have not yet got even workhouses; and in thrifty Scotland
itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in their dark lanes, hidden from
all but the eye of God, and of rare Benevolence the minister of God,
there are scenes of woe and destitution and desolation, such as, one
may hope, the Sun never saw before in the most barbarous regions where
men dwelt. Competent witnesses, the brave and humane Dr. Alison, who
speaks what he knows, whose noble Healing Art in his charitable hands
becomes once more a truly sacred one, report these things for us:
these things are not of this year, or of last year, have no reference
to our present state of commercial stagnation, but only to t