Food and raiment, household shelter and a grave, are all the Poor-Law allows to the pauper; for there is no clause in that act permitting him the enjoyment of the sweet air of heaven, or the open and unwalled sunshine (the gold which God scatters down for all), beyond what blows and beats upon the narrow court-yard in which he is doomed to walk--the Prisoner of Poverty. The birds he there hears sing are the dirty sparrows that roost under the soot-blackened eaves, and weary the heart with their unchangeable chirrup. The hum of his insects is the buzz of the bloated blue-bottle, ever hovering around, and endeavouring to blow and spoil the morsel of meat that is doled out to him with a niggard hand. The murmur of his streams is heard in the flushing of the poisonous sewers. The waving of his trees, the coarse garments that dangle on the clotheslines--for in such places it is ever washing-day. His blue sky is the little morsel of the face of heaven which (by straining his neck) he can see roofing the tall bare walls that surround him. His flowers are the morsels of chickweed, the two or three dwindling blades of grass, or the dank green moss, that shoot up beside the damp wall, or between the fissures of the pavement. His fragrance, a life-destroying atmosphere, a compound of all unwholesome smells. Day after day, week after week, month after month--throughout the budding spring--all the while the long-leaved summer reigns--when autumn is throwing her rainbow-hues over the forest, and winter comes forth, blowing his blue nails, and with the snow-flakes hanging on his hair--throughout all these changes he feels but cold and heat: can only tell when it is spring by hearing the cry of "primroses" without the walls; summer, by the hot pavement on which he treads; autumn, by the drawing in of the days and the chilly evenings; and winter, by the cold that seems to eat into his very bones. This is his life; these all the changes he knows, unless the rolling of the monotonous year is varied by the days he never left his sick-bed, or the weeks he spent in the hospital. The weary walls are ever the same; he has counted every fissure in the pavement; almost every morsel of gravel is familiar to his eye: he knows how many slabs are cracked and broken; at what hour he shall have gruel, when a change to potatoes. Meat-days are little feast-days; his spoon and porringer and plate his only comforters, until sleep comes and steeps his senses in forgetfulness. He knows when it is Sunday by receiving his clean shirt, and attending church.