That “Old Man at the Gate” has eighty years upon his head—eighty years, covering it with natural reverence. He was once in London—only once. This pilgrimage excepted, he has never journeyed twenty miles from the cottage in which he was born; of which he became the master; whereto he brought his wife; where his children saw the light, and their children after; where many of them died; and whence, having with a stout soul, fought against the strengthening ills of poverty and old age, he was thrust by want and sickness out, and, with a stung heart, he laid his bones upon a workhouse bed. Life to the “Old Man” has been one long path across a moor—a flat, unbroken journey; the eye uncheered, the heart unsatisfied. Coldness and sterility have compassed him round. Yet, has he been subdued to the blankness of his destiny? Has his mind remained the unwrit page that schoolmen talk of—has his heart become a clod? Has he been made by poverty a moving image—a plough-guiding, corn-thrashing instrument? Have not unutterable thoughts sometimes stirred within his brain—thoughts that elevated, yet confused him with a sense of eternal beauty—coming upon him like the spiritual presences to the shepherds? Has he not been beset by the inward and mysterious yearning of the heart towards the unknown and the unseen? He has been a ploughman. In the eye of the well-to-do, dignified with the accomplishments of reading and writing, is he of little more intelligence than the oxen treading the glebe. Yet, who shall say that the influence of nature—that the glories of the rising sun—may not have called forth harmonies of soul from the rustic drudge, the moving statue of a man! That worn-out, threadbare remnant of humanity at the gate; age makes it reverend, and the inevitable—shall inevitable be said?—injustice of the world invests it with majesty, the majesty of suffering meekly borne and meekly decaying. “The poor shall never cease out of the land.” This text the self-complacency of competence loveth to quote: it hath a melody in it, a lulling sweetness to the selfishness of our nature. Hunger, and cold, and nakedness, are the hard portion of man; there is no help for it; rags must flutter about us; man, yes, even the strong man, his only wealth (the wealth of Adam) wasting in his bones, must hold his pauper hand to his brother of four meals _per diem_; it is a necessity of nature, and there is no help for it. And thus some men send their consciences to sleep by the chinking of their own purses. Necessity of evil is an excellent philosophy applied to everybody but—ourselves.