d fire of
independent feeling is struggling through the long frost of
misfortune with patient dignity. It is a touching thing to see the
simple joys of life, in homes like these, crushed into a speechless
endurance of penury, and the native spirit of self-reliance writhing
in unavoidable prostration, and hoping on from day to day for better
times. I have seen many such places in my wanderings during these
hard days--cottages where all was so sweet and orderly, both in
person and habitation, that, but for the funereal stillness which
sat upon hunger-nipt faces, a stranger would hardly have dreamt that
the people dwelling there were undergoing any uncommon privation. I
have often met with such people in my rambles,--I have often found
them suffering pangs more keen than hunger alone could inflict,
because they arose from the loss of those sweet relations of
independence which are dear to many of them as life itself. With
such as these--the shy, the proud, the intelligent and uncomplaining
endurers--hunger is not the hardest thing that befalls:-

"When the mind's free,
The body's delicate; the tempest in their minds
Doth from their senses take all else,
Save what beats there."

People of this temper are more numerous amongst our working
population than the world believes, because they are exactly of the
kind least likely to be heard of. They will fight their share of the
battle of this time out as nobly as they have begun it; and it will
be an ill thing for the land that owns them if full justice is not
done to their worth, both now and hereafter.

In the same street where the old weaver lived, we called upon a
collier's family--a family of ten in number. The colliers of Wigan
have been suffering a good deal lately, among the rest of the
community, from shortness of labour. It was dinner-time when we
entered the house, and the children were all swarming about the
little place clamouring for their noontide meal. With such a rough
young brood, I do not wonder that the house was not so tidy as some
that I had seen. The collier's wife was a decent, good-tempered-
looking woman, though her face was pale and worn, and bore evidence
of the truth of her words, when she said, "Bless your life, aw'm
poo'd to pieces wi' these childer!" She sat upon a stool, nursing a
child at the breast, and doing her best to still the tumult of the
others, who were fluttering about noisily. "Neaw, Sammul," said she,
"theaw'll ha' that pot upo