We may have to do, moreover, with the poetry of association as conveyed in those festivals of joy or of sorrow which mark the progress of life and the peculiarity of manners. The nasal, droning burial psalm that may still be heard in remote places of England, winding up a hollow lane or across the corner of a moor,—as some little congregation of friends or neighbours bears a dead body home,—the twilight vesper service (intrinsically tuneless and unmusical) of the Sisters of Charity, who come back to their _Beguinage_ after a long day of hard work, hard prayers, hard consolation, and hard gossip among the poor;—do these things say nothing to us? Is nothing told us by the cry of sailors as they warp the ship into dock at the close of a wild and wintry voyage? by the serenade-music with which the impulsive people of a German town welcome some favourite poet or artist?—Are these not all, more or less, poems conveying to us something of feeling, and life, and youth, be we ever so soured, ever so seared by perpetual contact with coarser and harsher contemplations and employments? May we not call up such pictures,—may we not soothe ourselves with such harmonies,—may we not lay them to our souls as evidences? We must not use them by way of unction flattering us into the sentimental Waiting Gentlewoman’s notion that crime is to disappear like a scene in a pantomime, and thieves all of a sudden to grow as orderly as beadles; but we may apply them as alteratives when we are in danger of being wearied into doggedness, by the man who enacts fits at the street corner—or by the begging-letter Impostor who wrings crowns out of kind-hearted and economical souls, who must for their credulity’s sake forego their holiday—or by the Pole with his anti-Russian pamphlet, who makes his way in, to abase himself by fawning and genteel mendicity, under pretext of being a friend’s friend—or by the sight of such a pillar of stone as the woman who went into the confectioner’s shop to buy gingerbread, ‘because they were going to see our Sally hanged, and should be hungry!’ Yes: if sights and provocations and discouragements like these—of the earth, earthy—force themselves into our highways, all the more need is it that all celestial appearances and sounds in our bye-ways, be they ever so few, faint, and far, should be collected, and set down. Be they ever so rich, they will not be rich enough to justify an over-complacent or supine spirit—still less to tempt the healthily-minded to confound dross with pure gold: be they ever so meagre, they ought to keep alive in us the faith, that no portion of the earth is so barren, that Truth or Beauty, and Love, and Patience, and Honour, cannot grow therein. THE MINER’S DAUGHTERS.—A TALE OF THE PEAK. IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER II.—MILL LIFE.