tter with him. The real illness is weakness
of calibre--a looseness of fibre. Many a labourer has an aching limb from
rheumatism, and goes to plough all the same; many a poor cottage woman
suffers from that prevalent agony, and bravely gets through her task, and
keeps her cottage tidy. But these people cannot do it--they positively
cannot. The summer brings them pain, the winter brings pain, their whole
life is one long appeal _ad misericordiam_.

The disease seems to spread with the multiplication of the family: the
sons have it, and the sons' sons after them, so much so that even to bear
the name is sufficient to stamp the owner as a miserable helpless being.
All human wretchedness is, of course, to be deeply commiserated, and yet
it is exasperating to see one man still doing his best under real trouble,
and another eating contentedly the bread of idleness when there seems
nothing wrong except a total lack of energy. The old men go to the
workhouse, the young men go, the women and the children; if they are out
one month the next sees their return. These again are but broken reeds to
rely upon. The golden harvest might rot upon the ground for all their
gathering, the grass wither and die as it stands, without the touch of the
scythe, the very waggons and carts fall to pieces in the sheds. There is
no work to be got out of them.

The village, too, has its rookery, though not quite in the same sense as
the city. Traced to its beginning, it is generally found to have
originated upon a waste piece of ground, where some squatters settled and
built their cabins. These, by the growth of better houses around, and the
rise of property, have now become of some value, not so much for the
materials as the site. To the original hovels additions have been made by
degrees, and fresh huts squeezed in till every inch of space is as closely
occupied as in a back court of the metropolis. Within the cottages are low
pitched, dirty, narrow, and contracted, without proper conveniences, or
even a yard or court.

The social condition of the inhabitants is unpleasant to contemplate. The
young men, as they grow up, arrive at an exaggerated idea of the value of
their parents' property--the cottage of three rooms--and bitter
animosities arise between them. One is accused of having had his share out
in money; another has got into trouble and had his fine paid for him; the
eldest was probably born before wedlock; so there are plenty of materials