nurse? Do ye never, in your now undisturbed sleep, as ye were wont, hear some late Templar, "training for the law," having let fall a guinea in the street, cry "Watch!"-and when ye answer hoarsely to his cry, and walk reluctant up to where he stands, till he grows more explicit and explanative, and hurries your shuffling, slow feet by adding, "Here, bring your lantern this way, my good fellow, for I've dropped a shilling!" too-thoughtful student of mankind, fearful that, if he had named the larger sum, it might have tempted ye to withhold your light and your besought assistance? And do ye run up to the spot to be "first oars" -see where the golden glitterer lies at the first glance-clap your broad foot upon it to cover it up from his dim eyes-dim "with excess of law," or punch-lend him your lantern to look round for it, but stir not from your "vantage ground" till he has given the guinea up and gone his way, not rejoicing, but lamenting the loss, mayhap, of his first fee? And have ye the conscience still to take a shilling for your trouble? And when you have heard him knock, and seen him enter in at the Middle Temple gate, do ye now " put out the light," lest any eye should see what 'tis ye do; and then stooping down to your shoe, pick up the "one pound one" as lawful waif and stray, glorying that you have "done" the legal "knowing one ?" Do ye still rouse up the bakers' men when "the sponge has set," and get large hunks of "deadman" for your trouble? Or, are all your services, uses, abuses, authorities, powers, and all "the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious" Watchmanry extinct and clean forgotten? Then, indeed, is "Othello's occupation gone!" Out, alas! "Where be your gibes now" of the tipsy straggler, provoking him to a quarrel? Where be "the rows" ye kicked up and "the rowers" ye picked up? Where be those "lesser lights,' your lanterns? Night's candles are burnt out." Where be your staves?-where do the wood-worms peg them through like cribbageboards? Where do the moths make eyelet-holes in your right reverend watch-coats? "Oh fallen, fallen from your high estate !" "How are the mighty fallen!" But I will pity ye, though ofttimes pitiless. May those old "blankets of the dark," your many-milled watch-coatsinflexible as board-which could have stood alone, an' there were need on't, fitting ye like your watch-boxes-may they be superseded now by softer woollen appliances, lapping your superannuated bodies and rheu matic bones in one extreme-sweet pleasure,"the unusual pleasure of warmth-the old man's chariest luxury, and best of blessings! Watchmen-most ancient Watchmen-and all the long line of the dynasty of the Dogberries-went out with what I understand to be the true "Light of other days,"-those winking, weak-eyed lenders of a light to the purblind leaders of the blind-the old parish lamps. The garish eye" of Gas glared through the "darkness visible" of our streets, and these old owls, dazzled and blinded with the threatened excess of moral light-for so it was-shrunk from before its hated presence. I saw that all was over with them from that hour: that their infirmities and inefficiencies, thus exposed and brought to light, they could not stand the survey and investigation of these days. While the old obscurity reigned, men-watch-rate-paying men-were satisfied with hearing hourly and half-hourly the feeble cry of some old creature whom the cruel parish (meaning to be kind) kept out of his warm bed and were content to think that "their doors were blest from nightly harm" by these poor ministers and mumblers. The new light thrown upon the old darkness showed them up in their true "false presentments;" and it was seen at once that these old "halt, and lame, and blind" infantry-this veteran battalion, commanded by old Colonel Time-were not the effective men your watch and ward committees said they were, but feeble, frail, and impotent. From that hour their doom was sealed their dissolution was inevitable. Had they been Janissaries, one night would have seen them swept away from the face of the City; but as they happened to be indifferent Christians, they were spared. The fiat, however, went forth-that they should cease to beand they were seen and heard no more! "Fear no more the heat o' the moon, Nor the wintry storm that rages; All your worldly task is done, Home ye're gone, and got your wages! All follow ye, and come to dust." Not uncheerful-though strangely inverted-was the life of the old Watchman. Day was his night-night was his day: his life-or the latter years of it was all night. It was, indeed, a not incurious speculation to your physiognomist and your physiologist to get a sight of one of the old Watchmen by day. Plants which grow in cellars and in mines, far from "the healthy breath of Morn," and the genial influence of the sun, are white, colourless, and unwholesome-looking. A Watchman seen by day reminded you of these plants. He had that "interesting paleness " which a certain noble poet so much affected; and blended with this was a cold blueness, as though his blood wanted the ripening redness of the sun; and so, no doubt, it did. There was a hue in his aspect "sicklied o'er with the pale cast" of watching and lone-wandering through the solemn silence of a city asleep a thoughtful circumstance with the least thoughtful;-a look as though he felt somewhat out of his element in keeping such unseasonable hours as twelve at noon and one in the afternoon among a mob which he could not disperse-among a rude and noisy rabblement whom he could not command to keep the peace: he was, indeed, as much abroad and out of his place and element by day as a bee at Billingsgate. Meet him by day, and you saw at one glance at the old Watchman's face that he was no every-day man-that day knew him not well, and that he only knew the day as you might haply recognize in some young man, who has become a shining character, some once scrubby boy, the morning of whose life was palpably obscure, and whose "little day looked as though it would be a dull one: you are not sure that it is he, and yet you hope it is. The old Watchman cared not for day: "What had day with him to do? Sons of care, 'twas made for you!" Day was of no further consequence to him, than that its coming marked the time when his services might be dispensed with for awhile. He thanked Heaven for "his nightly bread." He went to bed with the owl-the Northern nightingale; and left it to the foolish lovers of long life to "rise with the lark, and go to bed with him," at such improper hours as that eminent vocalist-the skiey Incledon-keeps. He had but one favourite author-Dr. Young: he sometimes dipped into his "Night Thoughts," when his own perchance were drowsier, or the streets were more than commonly silent and well behaved. Sometimes, with the gentle Hervey, he contemplated the starry heavens. God knows! many an old man who has held the lantern in the midnight search for a dropt sixpence may have been an ill-starred, undiscovered Newton; and instead of following at the heels of Time, and telling, for his fellow-mortals, how fast he goes, might have walked with him as one of the few great companions of that untiring old Traveller, till both disappeared in the far distance of Eternity. But if he was an astronomer, he knew it not, or we know it not. He could point out the place of the Great Bear; but you might safelier rely upon his direction to the Brown Bear, Bow-street, where the night-wanderer could, in those days, "wet his clay." He loved, even to over-indulgence, (which spoils a taste as much as it spoils a child,) a colourless liquor, looking, to the simple eye, like veritable water, but, tasted, was much stronger-at least, than any water, save that miscalled "Thames water:" that is sometimes strong enough to knock you down. The old Watchman would, as hath been remarked by some one, "take any given quantity thereof." It was, haply, not unnatural that he whose office-whose "vocation" it was to trip up the heels of run-a-gates, and cry" Stand!" to an unsteady man, should love a cordial whose simple cognomen reminded him of that old "springe to catch woodcocks," the gin. The old Watchmen were valiant, if need were, and could strike; but they ever had an eye to the measure of capacity of the recipients. If they were small, weak vessels, they thumped away like carpet-beaters, and slackened not till they, perchance, had cracked them, and they began to run. If they were stout and sturdy vessels of war, which could maintain the fight "'gainst any odds" which the Watch could wage or wager, their blows being weak, and of "none effect " upon such" bully Bottoms," they would have been lost upon them, and so they threw them not away. Therein was their discretion. There was something warning the evil-doers to flee away, even in the very shuffling of their old shoon along the stones, which always " prated of their whereabout." Long before you saw the slow, old, creeping guardian of the sleeping hours, you heard him afar off, in the strict silence of the night,— "Poor traveller! His staff trail'd with him: scarcely did his feet or the summer silence: you would not have heard his feet, only that they were the sole things which were stirring. In the solemn moonlight nights of autumn, when this City seems most picturesque, and streets, which you see no beauty in by day, are turned by night, with its black shadows, and strange, loose, scattered distributions of light, into perfect pictures, that set the imagination wandering to old Venice, and you see Canalettis at every corner of the streets that slope towards the Thames-that fresher stream than the old Grand Canal gliding through all with calm majestic pace" in such an hour as this," when all the City slept, and not a sound alarmed "the peace-fond Night with noise," save the old Watchman's feeble cry, and his soft, feeble tread, he seemed the only living creature in the city of the dead-the only living link between the death of one day's life and the birth-time of another, as he crept along, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," like the Last Man; or like the solitary traveller in that old city of the desert, where all that lived were dead and turned to stone. The coming of your now watcher of the night is as sudden and unexpected, and yet as stealthy, as the stealing along of a thief. The burglar had time to finish his business, or, if not, to escape, ere the old Watchman had tottered up to where his booty laid. If, from some want of precaution on his part, the feeble old man caught him "at his dirty work," was he honest, his fears would counsel him to silence: was he a rogue, he "listened to reason," drew his hush-money at the time, was silent, passed on, winked, and saw nothing, but could say something," upon compulsion," or if tempted to speak by "Fifty Pounds Reward." The old Watchmen had their admirers and their enviers. There is no rank in life, however low, but there is some one, lower still, who looks up to it, and thinks it were promotion to rise to that high station. This admiration leads to imitation, and imitation, not unfrequently, to a sort of excellence. The old Watchmen, I repeat, had their admirers. The little sweeps -those "starvelings in a scanty vest " rising before the day, as they went chittering along the silent streets in a black, murky morningloved to hear their reverend voices-quavering with cold, and age, and the excess which only kept them up in the unnatural conflict with nature-sleep, rest, and nursing their infirmities. Those tender younglings, having their share of vulgar superstitions, as well as their betters, dreaded the silence of the darkness, but felt assured of their poor safety whenas they heard the old familiar quail-pipe of some grey Nestor of the night dwelling with an elaborate delight and "drowsy charm" upon "Past six o'clock, and a cloudy morning!"-an hour dear to him in winter, for it dismissed him to his bed. How those younkers reverenced him, and called him " father," and looked up to him as a man-a warm man, when they compared his large white watchcoat with their black tatters-as one high in authority, and yet not proud, nor stern, but full of humble condescensions to those small inferiors. The early labourer lit his three inches of pipe per favour of his lantern, and thought him no mean man. The houseless wretches with which this wealthy City abounds -greatly to this wealthy City's disgrace--when he was merciful to them, and drove them not about from pillar to post, from door to door, but let them huddle in a corner, if out of the way, and broke not their death-like sleep; or if, as he sometimes did, he shared with the starving creatures the cold orts given him by some good-hearted servant-girl, who " pitied the poor Watchman," as the hungry outcasts ravened over the dry morsels, they wept, feebly wept, that some one felt for them, though only a poor Watchman. That poor little devil-the printer's devil-that white sweep -(why not? as we have such nice distinctions as black smith and white smith ?) that indispensable imp-small go-between great printer and great poet-running indifferently from Davison to Byron, from Byron back again to Davison-first carrier of those immortal works consigned in parcels to the care of that best critic, Time, for the use of that young master, Posterity, now thumbing his small horn-book, who, when he has got through his letters, and can read, is to say whether he likes or likes them not-That wee devil, too soon for the late warehouseman by a good hour, would fly to the old Watchman's box as to a sanctuary, and felt a poor comfort and a warmth in looking at the light that shone through the lantern ;-perhaps held his cold hands, which knew no comfortable gloves, over its top, from whose vent-holes the heat would radiate, and there would warm his chapped and frozen fingers-an indulgence which the good fatherly man allowed. The late lodger-a single man, given to clubs-when he was locked out, or had forgot his keywalked round his beat with him, and found him sociable, and one who knew the world-by night. The 'prentice-boy, or hobbledehoy, just beginning to grow rakish and disorderly, returning late from private theatre or spouting-club, clung to his box, neighbouring his master's house, and while he went his round, took forty winks, snugly shut up in it, as that good man advised; and when "our maid" got up, as was her wont, at six, a gentle tap of the Watchman's staff against the arearailings brought Betty to the door; Master Dick's delinquency was apologised for, and looked over by the good-natured girl "as no business of her'n;" and all being now made right, Dick stepped out from the portico next door, thanked her for her kindness, entreated her silence, and slipping his shoes off, slid softly to his bed-room, past" the governor's door," just in time to hear his wakening bell ring him to his work, and, yawning, answer it. And so he 'scaped the Chamberlain, that severe Censor of your City 'prentices. The Watchman's box was eminently social, like a snuff-box; for all honest men and boys might "beard the lion in his den," an' they were known and of good repute, or were well-favoured. His box was political, too; for the Morning-paper compositor, if any extraordinary news was stirring, left the heads of it there, for further circulation, ere he went, tired of it himself, to bed. Next came the newsman, with his wet, cold quires under his rheumatic arm, who, if he had time, read out the brief particulars, while he, good Watchman, now thoroughly waked up, with mouth wide open, swallowed the important intelligence, trembled to hear it, but held his lantern steadily while his indifferent reader now fluently went on, and now boggled at, and sometimes spelt, a villanously hard word. It was a picture to see them-a picture of the past. "But those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray..... Down Fleet Street-up Ludgate Hill..... You will never more behold Feeble John or Robin bold..... Gone the merry midnight din : Gone the song of Jamie Lynn..... KEATS, cum var. |