From an inner upper room or gallery,we looked down into a range of private courts,where certain Chartist abilities were undergoing their term.Chartist ability First struck me very much;I had seen him about a year before,by involuntary accident and much to my disgust,magnetizing a silly young person;and had ed well the unlovely voracious look of him,his thick oily skin,his heavy dull-burning eyes,his greedy mouth,the dusky potent insatiable animalism that looked out of every feature of him:a fellow adequate to animal-magnetize most things,I did suppose;--and here was the post I found him arrived at.Next neighbor to him was ability Second,a philosophic or literary Chartist;walking rapidly to and fro in his private court,a clean,high-walled place;the world and its cares quite excluded,for some months to come:master of his own time and spiritual resources to,as I supposed,a really enviable extent.What "literary man"to an equal extent!I fancied I,for my own part,so left with paper and ink,and all taxes and botherations shut out from me,could have written such a Book as reader will here ever get of me.Never,O reader,never here in a mere house with taxes and botherations.Here,alas,one has to snatch one's poor Book,bit by bit,as from a conflagration;and to think and live,comparatively,as if the house were one's own,but mainly the world's and the devil's.ability Second might have filled one with envy.
The Captain of the place,a gentleman of ancient Military or Royal-Navy habits,was one of the most perfect govers;professionally and by nature zealous for cleanliness,punctuality,good order of every kind;a humane heart and yet a strong one;soft of speech and manner,yet with an inflexible rigor of command,so far as his limits went:"iron hand in a velvet glove,"as Napoleon defined it.A man of real worth,challenging at once love and respect:the light of those mild bright eyes seemed to permeate the place as with an all-pervading vigilance,and kindly yet victorious illumination;in the soft definite voice it was as if Nature herself were promulgating her orders,gentlest mildest orders,which however,in the end,there would be disobeying,which in the end there would be living without fulfilment of.A true "aristos,"and commander of men.A man worthy to have commanded and guided forward,in good ways,twelve hundred of the best common-people in London or the world:he was here,for many years past,giving all his care and faculty to command,and guide forward in such ways as there were,twelve hundred of the worst.I looked with considerable admiration on this gentleman;and with considerable astonishment,the reverse of admiration,on the work he had here been set upon.
This excellent Captain was too old a Commander to complain of anything;indeed he struggled visibly the other way,to find in his own mind that all here was best;but I could sufficiently discern that,in his natural instincts,if mounting up to the region of his thoughts,there was a continual protest going on against much of it;that nature and all his inarticulate persuasion (however much forbidden to articulate itself)taught him the futility and unfeasibility of the system followed here.
The Visiting Magistrates,he gently regretted rather than complained,had lately taken his tread-wheel from him,men were just pulling it down;and how he was henceforth to enforce discipline on these bad subjects,was much a difficulty with him.
"They cared for hing but the tread-wheel,and for having their rations cut short:"of the two sole penalties,hard work and occasional hunger,there remained only one,and that by means the better one,as he thought.The "sympathy"of visitors,too,their "pity"for his interesting scoundrel-subjects,though he tried to like it,was evidently joy to this practical mind.
Pity,yes:but pity for the scoundrel-species?For those who will have pity on themselves,and will force the Universe and the Laws of Nature to have "pity on"them?Meseems I could discover fitter objects of pity!
In fact it was too clear,this excellent man had got a field for his faculties which,in several respects,was by means the suitable one.To drill twelve hundred scoundrels by "the method of kindness,"and of abolishing your very tread-wheel,--how could any commander rejoice to have such a work cut out for him?You had but to look in the faces of these twelve hundred,and despair,for most part,of ever "commanding"them at all.
Miserable distorted blockheads,the generality;ape-faces,imp-faces,angry dog-faces,heavy sullen ox-faces;degraded underfoot perverse creatures,sons of in docility,greedy mutis darkness,and in one word,of STUPIDITY,which is the general mother of such.Stupidity intellectual and stupidity moral (for the one always means the other,as you will,with surprise or ,discover if you look)had borne this progeny:base-natured beings,on whom in the course of a maleficent subterranean life of London Scoundrelism,the Genius of Darkness (called Satan,Devil,and other names)had visibly impressed his seal,and had marked them out as soldiers of Chaos and of him,--appointed to serve in his Regiments,First of the line,Second ditto,and so on in their order.Him,you could perceive,they would serve;but easily aher than him.These were the subjects whom our brave Captain and Prison-Gover was appointed to command,and reclaim to other service,by "the method of love,"with a tread-wheel abolished.
