One of Dr. Alison's Scotch facts struck us much.[26] A poor Irish Widow, her husband having died in one of the Lanes of Edinburgh, went forth with her three children, bare of all resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments of that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at that she was refused; referred from one to the other, helped by none;--till she had exhausted them all; till her strength and heart failed her: she sank down in typhus-fever; died, and infected her Lane with fever, so that 'seventeen other persons' died of fever there in consequence. The humane Physician asks thereupon, as with a heart too full for speaking, Would it not have been _economy_ to help this poor Widow? She took typhus-fever, and killed seventeen of you!--Very curious. The forlorn Irish Widow applies to her fellow-creatures, as if saying, "Behold I am sinking, bare of help: ye must help me! I am your sister, bone of your bone; one God made us: ye must help me!" They answer, "No, impossible; thou art no sister of ours." But she proves her sisterhood; her typhus-fever kills _them_: they actually were her brothers, though denying it! Had human creature ever to go lower for a proof? For, as indeed was very natural in such case, all government of the Poor by the Rich has long ago been given over to Supply-and-demand, Laissez-faire and suchlike, and universally declared to be 'impossible.' "You are no sister of ours; what shadow of proof is there? Here are our parchments, our padlocks, proving indisputably our money-safes to be _ours_, and you to have no business with them. Depart! It is impossible!"--Nay, what wouldst thou thyself have us do? cry indignant readers. Nothing, my friends,--till you have got a soul for yourselves again. Till then all things are 'impossible.' Till then I cannot even bid you buy, as the old Spartans would have done, two-pence worth of powder and lead, and compendiously shoot to death this poor Irish Widow: even that is 'impossible' for you. Nothing is left but that she prove her sisterhood by dying, and infecting you with typhus. Seventeen of you lying dead will not deny such proof that she _was_ flesh of your flesh; and perhaps some of the living may lay it to heart. * * * * * 'Impossible:' of a certain two-legged animal with feathers it is said, if you draw a distinct chalk-circle round him, he sits imprisoned, as if girt with the iron ring of Fate; and will die there, though within sight of victuals,--or sit in sick misery there, and be fatted to death. The name of this poor two-legged animal is--Goose; and they make of him, when well fattened, _Pate de foie gras_, much prized by some! FOOTNOTES: [26] _Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland_, by William Pulteney Alison, M.D. (Edinburgh, 1840.) CHAPTER III. GOSPEL OF DILETTANTISM.