at least, to hang about the scene, and to impart to it a squalid and

sickly hue.

Many eyes, that have long since been closed in the grave, have looked

round upon that scene lightly enough, when entering the gate of the

old Marshalsea Prison for the first time; for despair seldom comes with

the first severe shock of misfortune. A man has confidence in untried

friends, he remembers the many offers of service so freely made by his

boon companions when he wanted them not; he has hope - the hope

of happy inexperience - and however he may bend beneath the first

shock, it springs up in his bosom, and flourishes there for a brief

space, until it droops beneath the blight of disappointment and

neglect. How soon have those same eyes, deeply sunken in the head,

glared from faces wasted with famine, and sallow from confinement, in

days when it was no figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in

prison, with no hope of release, and no prospect of liberty! The atrocity

in its full extent no longer exists, but there is enough of it left to give

rise to occurrences that make the heart bleed.

'Twenty years ago, that pavement was worn with the footsteps of a

mother and child, who, day by day, so surely as the morning came,

presented themselves at the prison gate; often after a night of restless

misery and anxious thoughts, were they there, a full hour too soon,

and then the young mother turning meekly away, would lead the child

to the old bridge, and raising him in her arms to show him the

glistening water, tinted with the light of the morning's sun, and

stirring with all the bustling preparations for business and pleasure

that the river presented at that early hour, endeavour to interest his

thoughts in the objects before him. But she would quickly set him

down, and hiding her face in her shawl, give vent to the tears that

blinded her; for no expression of interest or amusement lighted up his

thin and sickly face. His recollections were few enough, but they were

all of one kind - all connected with the poverty and misery of his

parents. Hour after hour had he sat on his mother's knee, and with

childish sympathy watched the tears that stole down her face, and

then crept quietly away into some dark corner, and sobbed himself to

sleep. The hard realities of the world, with many of its worst privations

hunger and thirst, and cold and want - had all come home to him,

from the first dawnings of reason; and though the form of childhood

was there, its light heart, its merry laugh, and sparkling eyes were

wanting. 'The father and mother looked on upon this, and upon each

other, with thoughts of agony they dared not breathe in words. The

healthy, strong-made man, who could have borne almost any fatigue

of active exertion, was wasting beneath the close confinement and

unhealthy atmosphere of a crowded prison. The slight and delicate

woman was sinking beneath the combined effects of bodily and mental

illness. The child's young heart was breaking.

The Pickwick Papers