But ALTON read largely, notwithstanding his privations. What of his time was not spent on the tailor's board, was devoted to the writings of the great spirits of the age. On a holiday he visited the National Gallery, and learned to love and bless the painters. He studied narrowly MILTON and TENNYSON, and many other writers, and among them "that great prose poem, the single epic of modern days, THOMAS CARLYLE'S _French Revolution_." ALTON'S daydreams were more numerous than we should imagine are those of the majority of men who are steeped in poverty as he was; and he has described them well. When he did learn to walk into the fields, he truly enjoyed the liberty thus attained. THE FIRST SIP OF FREEDOM. "It was a glorious morning at the end of May; and when I escaped from the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I found the sky a sheet of cloudless blue. How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses, which lined the road for miles--the great roots of London, running far out into the country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food, and merchandise, and human beings--the sap of the huge metropolitan life-tree! How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas, till hope deferred made the heart sick, and the country seemed--like the place where the rainbow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana settlers--always a little farther off! How, between gaps in the houses right and left, I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields, shut from me by dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and speculate on the names of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead--something really worth stopping to look at--till the houses thickened again into a street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the midst of a town! And then more villas and palings; and then a village: when would they stop, those endless houses? At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I passed began to look more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, cattle yards and farm buildings appeared; and right and left, far away, spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and corn-fields. Oh, the joy! The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate hue and scent of the fresh clover-fields, the steep clay banks where I stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child--and then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank toward the Red House. I hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the checkered squares of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks