That mystic Tree which breathed to me That sometimes murmur'd overhead Where lofty Elms abound. THE LAY OF THE LABORER. It was a gloomy evening. The sun had set, angry and threatening, lighting up the horizon with lurid flame and flakes of blood-red-slowly quenched by slants of distant rain, dense and dark as segments of the old deluge. At last the whole sky was black, except the low-driving grey scud, amidst which faint streaks of lightning wandered capriciously towards their appointed aim, like young fire-fiends playing on their errands. "There will be a storm!" whispered nature herself, as the crisp fallen leaves of autumn started up with a hollow rustle, and began dancing a wild round, with a whirlwind of dust, like some frantic orgy ushering in a revolution. "There will be a storm!" I echoed, instinctively looking round for the nearest shelter, and making towards it at my best pace. At such times the proudest heads will bow to very low lintels; and setting dignity against a ducking, I very willingly condescended to stoop into "The Plough." It was a small hedge alehouse, too humble for the refinement of a separate parlor. One large tap-room served for all comers, gentle or simple, if gentlefolks, except from stress of weather, ever sought such a place of entertainment. Its scanty accommodations were even meaner than usual: the Plough had suffered from the hardness of the times, and exhibited the bareness of a house recently unfurnished by the broker. The aspect of the pub. lic room was cold and cheerless. There was a mere glimmer of fire in the grate, and a single unsnuffed candle stood guttering over the neck of the stone bottle in which it was stuck, in the middle of the plain deal table. The low ceiling, blackened by smoke, hung overhead like a canopy of gloomy clouds; the walls were stained with damp, and patches of the plaster had peeled off from the naked laths. Ornament there was none, except a solitary print, gaudily daubed in body-colors, and formerly glazed, as hinted by a small triangle of glass in one corner of the black frame. The subject, "the Shipwrecked Mariner," whose corpse, jacketed in bright sky-blue, rolled on a still brighter strip of yellow shingle, between two grass-green wheat-sheaves with white ears but intended for foaming billows. Above all, the customary odors were wanting; the faint smell of beer and ale, the strong scent of spirits, the fumes of tobacco; none of them agreeable to a nice sense, but decidedly missed with a feeling akin to disappointment. Rank or vapid, they belonged to the place, representing, though in an infinitely lower key, the bouquet of Burgundy, the aroma of choice liqueurs-the breath of social enjoyment. Yet there was no lack of company. Ten or twelve mer, some young, but the majority of the middle age, and one or two advanced in years, were seated at the sordid board. As many glasses and jugs of various patterns stood before them; but mostly empty, as was the tin tankard from which they had beer. replenished. Only a few of the party in the neighborhood of a brown earthenware pitcher had full cups; but of the very small ale called Adam's. Their coin and credit exhausted, they were keeping up the forms of drinking and good fellowship with plain water. From the same cause, a bundle of new clay pipes lay idle on the table, unsoiled by the Indian weed. A glance sufficed to show that the company were of the laboring class-men with tanned, furrowed faces, and hairy, freckled hands who smelt "of the earth, earthy," and were clad in fustian and leather, in velveteen and corduroy, glossy with wear or wet, soiled by brown clay and green moss, scratched and torn by brambles, wrinkled, warped, and threadbare with age, and variously patched-garments for need and decency, not show ;for if, amidst the prevailing russets, drabs, and olives, there was a gayer scrap of green, blue, or red, it was a tribute not to vanity but expediency-some fragment of military broadcloth or livery plush. As I entered, the whole party turned their eyes upon me, and reserve. having satisfied themselves by a brief scrutiny that my face and person were unknown to them, thenceforward took no more notice of me than their own shadows on the wall. I could have fancied myself invisible, they resumed their conversation with so little The topics, such as poor men discuss amongst themselves the dearness of bread, the shortness of work, the long hours of labor, the lowness of wages, the badness of the weather, the sickliness of the season, the signs of a hard winter, the general evils of want, poverty, and disease; but accompanied by such particular revelations, such minute details, and frank disclosures, as should only have come from persons talking in their sleep! The vulgar indelicacy, methought, with which they gossipped before me of family matters-the brutal callousness with which they exposed their private affairs, the whole history and mystery of bed, board, and hearth, the secrets of home! But a little more listening and reflection converted my disgust into pity and concern. Alas! I had forgotten that the lives of certain classes of our species have been laid almost as bare and open as those of the beasts of the field! The poor men had no domestic secrets-no private affairs! All were public-matters of notoriety-friend and foe concurring in the advertisement. The law had ferreted their huts, and scheduled their three-legged tables and bottomless chairs. Statistical Groses had taken notes, and printed them, of every hole in their coats. Political reporters had calculated their incomings and outgoings down to fractions of pence and half ounces of tea; and had supplied the minutiae of their domestic economy for paragraphs and leading articles. Charity, arm in arm with curiosity, and clerical philanthropy, linked perhaps with a religious inquisitor, had taken an inventory of their defects moral and spiritual; whilst medical visitors had inspected and recorded their physical sores, cancerous and scrofulous, their humors, and their tumors. Society, like a policeman, had turned upon them the full blaze of its bull's eye-exploring the shadiest recesses of their privacy, till their means, food, habits, and modes of existence were as minutely familiar as those of the animalculæ exhibited in Regent street by the solar microscope. They had no longer any decent appearances to keep up-any shabby ones to mask with a better face-any petty shifts to slur over-any household struggles to conceal. Their circumstances were known intimately, not merely to next-door neighbors, and kith and kin, but to the whole parish, the whole county, the whole country. It was one of their last few privileges to discuss in common with the parliament, the press, and the public, the deplorable details of their own affairs. Their destitution was a naked great fact, and they talked of it like proclaimed bankrupts, as they were, in the wide world's Gazette. "What matters ?" said a grey-headed man, in fustian, in answer to a warning nudge and whisper from his neighbor. "If walls has ears, they are welcome to what they can ketch—ay, and the stranger to boot-if so be he don't know all about us already for it's all in print. What we yarn, and what we spend-what we eat, and what we drink-what we wear, and the cost on it from top to toe-where we sleep, and how many on us lie in a bed-our consarns are as common as waste land." "And as many geese and donkeys turned on to them, I do think!" cried a young fellow in velveteens-" to hear how folk cackle and bray about our states. And then the queer remedies as is prescribed, like, for a starving man! A Bible says one→→→ a reading made easy says another-a temperance medal says another or maybe a hagricultural prize. But what is he to eat, I ax? Why, says one, a Corkassian Jew-says another, a cricket ball-says another, a may-pole—and says another, the Wenus bound for Horsetrailye." "As if idle hands and empty pockets," said the grey-headed man, "did not make signs, of themselves, for work and wages —and a hungry belly for bread and cheese.” "I "That's true any how," said one of the water-drinkers. only wish that a doctor would come at this minute, and listen with his telescope on my stomach, and he would hear it a-talking as plain as our magpie, and saying, I wants wittles." There was a general peal of mirth at this speech, but brief, and ending abruptly, as laughter does, when extorted by the odd treatment of a serious subject-a flash followed by deeper gloom. The conversation then assumed a graver tone; each man in turn recounting the trials, privations, and visitations, of |