y a favourable specimen of the
happy English peasant;" said Lester, smiling.

"Yet they say," added Madeline, "that she was not always the same
perverse and hateful creature she is now."

"Ay," said Aram, "and what then is her history?"

"Why," replied Madeline, slightly blushing to find herself made the
narrator of a story, "some forty years ago this woman, so gaunt and
hideous now, was the beauty of the village. She married an Irish soldier
whose regiment passed through Grassdale, and was heard of no more
till about ten years back, when she returned to her native place, the
discontented, envious, altered being you now see her."

"She is not reserved in regard to her past life," said Lester. "She is
too happy to seize the attention of any one to whom she can pour forth
her dark and angry confidence. She saw her husband, who was afterwards
dismissed the service, a strong, powerful man, a giant of his tribe,
pine and waste, inch by inch, from mere physical want, and at last
literally die from hunger. It happened that they had settled in the
country in which her husband was born, and in that county, those
frequent famines which are the scourge of Ireland were for two years
especially severe. You may note, that the old woman has a strong vein of
coarse eloquence at her command, perhaps acquired in (for it partakes of
the natural character of) the country in which she lived so long; and it
would literally thrill you with horror to hear her descriptions of the
misery and destitution that she witnessed, and amidst which her husband
breathed his last. Out of four children, not one survives. One, an
infant, died within a week of the father; two sons were executed, one
at the age of sixteen, one a year older, for robbery committed under
aggravated circumstances; and the fourth, a daughter, died in the
hospitals of London. The old woman became a wanderer and a vagrant, and
was at length passed to her native parish, where she has since dwelt.
These are the misfortunes which have turned her blood to gall; and these
are the causes which fill her with so bitter a hatred against those whom
wealth has preserved from sharing or witnessing a fate similar to hers."

"Oh!" said Aram, in a low, but deep tone, "when--when will these hideous
disparities be banished from the world? How many noble natures--how many
glorious hopes--how much of the seraph's intellect, have been crushed
into the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the mere force o