the blinded trappings which may conceal them from mortal sight, and the naked roots, from which a thousand evils have sprung, are laid bare, and open, and undisguised— when the lips of the paid pleader are mute, and the hired defender of wrong stands silent-when right shall need no advocate, and wrong shall not lack an accuser-when the balance of justice is held even by an Omnipotent arm, and not a human being dares to tamper with it, or sully its star-like brightness with a breath?-then may the form of Mary, holding up her child, stand high, and with pointed finger mark out those whose cruel laws drove her to seek, through the dark alleys of death, that repose which they denied her here. And if the realms of eternal misery, like those fabled by the old poets, are divided into regions where the bleak winter rages, and the summer burns with a volcanic heat, the avenging spirit need not to inflict on them a sterner doom, nor deal forth a juster punishment, than to turn them abroad, without either food or raiment, on some unbounded and frozen desert, and leave them to the same elements and the same mercy to which they left poor Mary and her child,-the icy torments to which Dante consigned Ugolino and Ruggiéri, in his "Inferno." * And what thought young farmer Elliston to all this? He cared not; for the law which should have protected *The fact upon which the story of "Pretty Mary" is founded will be familiar to every reader of the newspapers. So recently as about the time of the opening of Parliament, in 1846, a similar scene was repeated:-A poor woman and her infant were sent out of the Union Workhouse at Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, all but naked; the child was picked up dead, and the woman committed to take her trial for murder. It almost seems, on again reading over this portion of the sketch, that I had been adding a chapter to a Romance, instead of merely painting the scenery amid which this terrible tragedy was enacted. Mary and her child was so framed that it could not touch him-was so worded that a woman who had still a remnant of modesty left, shrunk back in disgust from its aid. The fate of the beautiful and broken-hearted girl seemed to concern him not. Beauty seldom exists without vanity; and, in the higher circles of society, women are hemmed in with binding forms and becoming ceremonies; and when this barrier is overleaped, there comes the law, thundering with indignation, and heavy with damages; while the poorer daughter of Eve is compensated with a broken heart, and an early death! Many a simple country youth and maiden who envied Mary on the day of the statutes, and thought or spoke harshly of her as she passed, were sorry at heart for what they had done; and numberless are the visits which they have since paid to her suffering mother, and many the trifling presents they have made her. As for the noble-hearted butcher of Rampton, he came to some arrangement with the master of the Union Workhouse, which stopped the mouth of the law: "For," as he said, "the thief who would lend himself to turn out a woman and child on such a day as he did, almost naked, and in the midst of a wild common, and all to keep his hateful situation, would, at any time, submit to having his head broken, if he could but get a pound or two by it, and the doctor's bill paid; which he was sure to charge over again to the parish." Both he and his wife, however, bestirred themselves, and through their interference, and the assistance of other friends, the remains of poor Mary were brought back from the gaol in which she expired (almost as soon as it was entered); and she and her child were buried in the same grave, in the churchyard of the village in which she was born. The grave opened its hungry jaws but once to receive them both, then closed upon the blighted flower and the opening blossom for ever! "She died in youth-and bowed 'Neath woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb "Crowned with her pail, the tripping milkmaid sings; BEATTIE'S MINSTREL. HERE we are at Gracechurch Street (why did they alter the fine old name of Gracious Street?-but we will not quarrel about that now). What a lovely summer's morning! Let us jump up on the outside of this Camberwell omnibus; we can ride all the way from the city of London to the Fox-under-the-Hill for sixpence, and that is a good step beyond Camberwell Green. Be careful how you get down; the omnibus goes no further this way, so there is no occasion to hurry-there are other conveyances to Dulwich and Norwood, but we are going to walk across the fields. The first turning to the left is Champion Hill, and in that direction we will bend our course. Yes, it is very beautiful here—we are in the country at once. What a scene opens upon us, and we have not yet walked half-amile! Woods, green fields, beautiful hills, sloping down into rich pasture-lands, houses nestling in sweet shady spots-and all burst upon the view in an instant! We never yet brought a stranger here who was not startled by the sudden opening of this delicious scene. This is called Five-field Lane; across those fields, at the bottom of it, over rude stiles and pleasant foot-paths, which will bend out a little to the right, is the old rural pathway to the ancient village of Dulwich. Here we might fancy ourselves a hundred miles from London. What rude, primitive stiles! Look at the young couple before us—nay, let us turn our heads, or the young lady will never get over. How cheering is the ring of her silvery laugh! I'll be sworn she never leant so heavily upon her lover before; and she fell with her face upon his, as if by accident, and then said, "Adone, William, do." All these hedges were white over, a month ago, with the blossoms of the hawthorn; the very air was redolent of their perfume. We turn off here. You see that clump of trees at the bottom of the field beyond us, to the left? They overhang a pond, around which grows hundreds of blue-bells. We know no spot so near London as this |