pathetically observes) to be good when one is poor than when
one is rich. It is (and all rich people should consider the fact) much
more easy, if not to go to heaven, at least to think one is going
thither, on three thousand a year, than on three hundred. Not only is
respectability more easy, as is proved by the broad fact that it is
the poor people who fill the gaols, and not the rich ones: but virtue,
and religion--of the popular sort. It is undeniably more easy to be
resigned to the will of Heaven, when that will seems tending just as
we would have it; much more easy to have faith in the goodness of
Providence, when that goodness seems safe in one's pocket in the
form of bank-notes; and to believe that one's children are under the
protection of Omnipotence, when one can hire for them in half an hour
the best medical advice in London. One need only look into one's own
heart to understand the disciples' astonishment at the news, that "How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven."

"Who then can be saved?" asked they, being poor men, accustomed to
see the wealthy Pharisees in possession of "the highest religious
privileges, and means of grace." Who, indeed, if not the rich? If the
noblemen, and the bankers, and the dowagers, and the young ladies who
go to church, and read good books, and have been supplied from youth
with the very best religious articles which money can procure, and
have time for all manner of good works, and give their hundreds to
charities, and head reformatory movements, and build churches,
and work altar-cloths, and can taste all the preachers and
father-confessors round London, one after another, as you would taste
wines, till they find the spiritual panacea which exactly suits their
complaint--if they are not sure of salvation, who can be saved?

Without further comment, the fact is left for the consideration of
all readers; only let them not be too hard upon Elsley and Lucia, if,
finding themselves sometimes literally at their wits' end, they went
beyond their poor wits into the region where foolish things are said
and done.

Moreover, Elsley's ill-temper (as well as Lucia's) had its excuses in
physical ill-health. Poor fellow! Long years of sedentary work had
begun to tell upon him; and while Tom Thurnall's chest, under the
influence of hard work and oxygen, measured round perhaps six inches
more than it had done sixteen years ago, Elsley's, thanks to stooping
and