the union
workhouse--he died; and may, for aught we know, have ere this met
Squire Lavington . . . He is supposed, or at least said, to have had
a soul to be saved . . . as I think, a body to be saved also. But
what is one more among so many? And in an over-peopled country like
this, too. . . . One must learn to look at things--and paupers--in
the mass.

The poor of Whitford also? My dear readers, I trust you will not
ask me just now to draw the horoscope of the Whitford poor, or of
any others. Really that depends principally on yourselves. . . .
But for the present, the poor of Whitford, owing, as it seems to
them and me, to quite other causes than an 'overstocked labour-
market,' or too rapid 'multiplication of their species,' are growing
more profligate, reckless, pauperised, year by year. O'Blareaway
complained sadly to me the other day that the poor-rates were
becoming 'heavier and heavier'--had nearly reached, indeed, what
they were under the old law. . . .

But there is one who does not complain, but gives and gives, and
stints herself to give, and weeps in silence and unseen over the
evils which she has yearly less and less power to stem.

For in a darkened chamber of the fine house at Steamingbath, lies on
a sofa Honoria Lavington--beautiful no more; the victim of some
mysterious and agonising disease, about which the physicians agree
on one point only--that it is hopeless. The 'curse of the
Lavingtons' is on her; and she bears it. There she lies, and prays,
and reads, and arranges her charities, and writes little books for
children, full of the Beloved Name which is for ever on her lips.
She suffers--none but herself knows how much, or how strangely--yet
she is never heard to sigh. She weeps in secret--she has long
ceased to plead--for others, not for herself; and prays for them
too--perhaps some day her prayers will yet he answered. But she
greets all visitors with a smile fresh from heaven; and all who
enter that room leave it saddened, and yet happy, like those who
have lingered a moment at the gates of paradise, and seen angels
ascending and descending upon earth. There she lies--who could wish
her otherwise? Even Doctor Autotheus Maresnest, the celebrated
mesmeriser, who, though he laughs at the Resurrection of the Lord,
is confidently reported to have raised more than one corpse to life
himself, was heard to say, after having attended her professionall