DOUGLAS JERROLD'S SHILLING MAGAZINE. THE HISTORY OF ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. OUR INTRODUCTION. We are UR first paragraph shall be a confession of ignorance. We know not the genealogy of St. Giles. All we know is this. Our St. Giles was born-we can hardly say first saw the light-in Hampshire Hog Lane. We believe that we are pretty sure of his father: but at once lose ourselves, seeking his grandsire. immediately in a genealogical fog, without even a link's end from the Herald's office to guide us. True it is, we might if we would, sit contentedly down in the darkness, and our imagination aided by obscurity-as men are apt to close their eyes when they would take a bright internal look-might in a trice discover the family tree; now complacently following its branches as they waved towards the court-end of the town, and now avoiding them as they struck towards Tyburn. We might do this: for it has been done many a time, and for only so much hard cash. But can the family of St. Giles fee us for the labour? No. Then we trust we are not so wholly lost to the decencies of life, as to lie gratis, Nevertheless, we owe some explanation to the polite reader, for that we have given typographical precedence to St. Giles to the apparent injury of St. James. We think we have a just reason for this. There appears to us-and sure we are the like opinion burns in the breasts of many most respectable people-more of the original animal man in St. Giles, than in St. James. He seems to vindicate, and that brazenly, unblushingly, the baseness of his origin. He stands before us a creature of the earth; or rather, of the mud of the earth. If it be otherwise, then has St. Giles again and again been much abused, mistaken. The very nakedness of St. Giles-according to our heraldrymakes him elder brother of St. James. As we consider him, he is as much the elder, as the bare skin of man is older than the silks and velvets that have enwrapt it. He may be a marked and branded vagabond; but, nevertheless, he is the elder brother. Contemplating him, we behold in his wants-in his fierceness, begotten of these wants-the proscribed from the confines of this world's Paradise. Consider the history of man. Your vagabond is lost in the shadows of antiquarian night: now, your gentleman is a commonplace of yesterday. Upon this philosophical principle do we place St. Giles before St. James, and believe us, dear reader, for no catchpenny reason whatever. We do not say that a three-legged oaken stool, is a finer, more commodious chattel than a gilded chair; but, in the genealogy of household moveables, sure we are it ranks as the elder brother. St. Giles and St. James! Is it possible they can be brethren? Every particle of their faces, every atom of their covering cries no: externally as different as the aforesaid three-legged stool and glittering chair; and yet, in truth, of the same frame-work -the very same. Impossible! Let us see. What a clumsy thing is this three-legged stool. What heavy joinery work! Surely, it was shaped by an adze, and put together by some bungler, ignorant of the craft. What a piece of stark vulgarity! How very handsome the chair of ceremony! How soft to the touch-how pleasant to the eye! All damask, carving and gilding. Well, we have stript away the covering; we have scratched a little of the gilding off, and what is there beneath ?— why oak, mere oak; a younger branch of the tree-a piece of kindred wood to the three-legged stool. The same material makes stool and chair,—but then the magical delusion worked by damask, gold, and dainty carving! In this way it is our hope to show St. Giles and St. James: to prove their brotherhood-their identity of material. We may here and there scratch a little of the gilding off one, but only to display the kindred nature of both. Thus, St. James may sometimes appear to be only St. Giles better stuffed, and with a brighter covering. CHAPTER I. THE streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all who had the shelter of a roof to their homes: and the north-east blast seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter was at the heart of all things. The wretched, dumb with excess of misery, suffered, in stupid resignation, the tyranny of the season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want; and death in that despairing hour losing its terrors, looked, in the eyes of many a wretch, a sweet deliverer. It was a time when the very poor, barred from the commonest things of earth, take strange counsel with themselves, and in the deep humility of destitution, believe they are the burden and the offal of the world. It was a time, when the easy, comfortable man, touched with finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance; and, whilst bestowing, feels almost a shame that with such wide-spread misery circled round him, he has all things fitting; all things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the multitude of wretchedness; demands to know for what especial excellence he is promoted above the thousand, thousand starving creatures in his very tenderness for misery, tests his privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him downward to the brute. And so questioned, this man gives in modesty of spirit-in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not cold, formal charities; but reverent sacrifices to his suffering brother. It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth; with no other thoughts than of its many pleasant gifts; all made pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation around. When the mere worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber, because it is so bitter cold without; when he eats and drinks with whetted appetite, because he hears of destitution, prowling like a wolf around his well-barred house; when, in fine, he bears his every comfort about him with the pride of a conqueror. A time when such a man sees in the misery of his fellow-beings nothing save his own victory of fortune-his own successes in a suffering world. To such a man the poor are but the tattered slaves that grace his triumph. It was a time, too, when human nature often shows its true divinity, and with misery like a garment clinging to it, forgets its wretchedness in sympathy with suffering. A time, when in the cellars and garrets of the poor are acted scenes which make the noblest heroism of life; which prove the immortal texture of the human heart, not to be wholly seared by the branding-iron of the torturing hours. A time when in want, in anguish, in throes of mortal agony, some seed is sown that bears a flower in heaven. midnight, when a Was she sleeping, Such was the time, the hour approaching woman sat on a door-step in a London street. or was she another victim of the icy season? Her head had fallen backward against the door, and her face shone like a white stone in the moonlight. There was a terrible history in that face; cut and lined as it was by the twin-workers, vice and misery. Her temples were sunken; her brow wrinkled and pinched; and her thin, jagged mouth-in its stony silence-breathed a frightful eloquence. It was a hard mystery to work out, to look upon that face, and try to see it in its babyhood. Could it be thought that woman was once a child? Still she was motionless-breathless. And now, a quick, tripping footstep sounds in the deserted street; and a woman, thinly, poorly clad, but clean and tidy withal, approaches the door. She is humming a tune, a blithe defiance to the season, and her manner is of one hastening homeward. "Good God! if it isn't a corpse! she cried, standing suddenly fixed before what seemed, in truth, the effigy of death. In a moment, recovering herself, she stooped towards the sitter, and gently shook her. "Stone-cold -frozen! Lord in heaven! that his creatures should perish in the street! And then the woman, with a piercing shriek, called the watch; but the watch, true to its reputation for sound substantial sleep, answered not. "Watch-watch! screamed the woman with increasing shrillness; but the howling of the midnight wind was the only response. A moment she paused; then looked at what she deemed the dead; and flinging her arms about her, flew back along the path she had trod. With scarcely breath to do common credit to her powers of scolding, she drew up at a watch-box, and addressed herself to the peaceful man within. Why, watch-here! a pretty fellow !-people pay rates, andwatch, watch!—there's a dead woman-dead, I tell you-watch -pay rates, and are let to die, and-watch-watch-watch! And still she screamed, and at length, clawed at and shook the modest wooden tenement which, in those happy but not distant days of England, sheltered England's civil guardians. 66 He had The watchman was coiled up for unbroken repose. evidently settled the matter with himself to sleep until called to breakfast by the tradesman who, at the corner post, spread his hospitable table for the early wayfarers who loved saloop. Besides, the watchman was at least sixty-five years old; twenty years he had been guardian of the public peace, and he knew-no one better that on such a night even robbery would take a holiday, forgetting the cares and profits of business in comfortable blankets. With such assurance, the watchman had extinguished his head with his hat, crossed his legs, and knotted his arms, with a predetermination that nothing short of an earthquake, or the saloop, should wake him. But then the watchman dreamt not of the vigour, the perseverance of the assailant, who still screamed at him-still shook his modest bedroom. At length, but slowly, did the watchman answer the summons. Like an awakening snake, he gradually uncoiled himself; and whilst the woman's tongue rang-rang like a bell-he calmly pushed up his hat, and opening his two small, swinish eyes, looked at the intruder, but saw her not. "How the time's past! Well, Master Grub "—for the watchman thought only of the saloop merchant-"you may bring the stuff here. And this morning, I think I'll take toast. This said, the speaker dashed forward his arms through his box so suddenly, so vigorously, that the woman screamed anew as she jumped aside. But the watchman had no such unmanly thought. No; all he contemplated was a hearty yawn; which, with his arms, legs, head, and shoulders, he took so sufficingly, that his watch-box reverberated like the cave of some carnivorous, fullgorged beast. 66 Well! after that I hope you are awake—and after that"What's the matter? asked the watchman, feeling that the hour of saloop was not arrived, and surlily shaking himself at the disappointment, What's the matter? 66 66 The matter! Poppy-head!"-and the woman was proceeding in her invective, when the functionary observed, 66 66 Any more of your bad language, and I shall lock you up.' And this he said with quite the air of a man who keeps his word. There's a woman frozen to death," cried the disturber of the watchman's peace; at once violently coming to the object of her mission. "That was last night," said the watchman, with a slight, supplementary yawn. |