Charles Thomas Browne

“ I have not, however, yet exhausted the perplexities which besiege the indefatigable sub-editor. What he has already achieved is comparatively speaking smooth and pleasant work. In addition to this daily accumulation of news—the stream of which is constant as the rise and fall of the tide, and as inexorable—flow in occasional freshets of intelligence. They sweep in like the Bore of the Ganges, and all must be made straight for their reception. ”

“ WORKING MEN’S CLUBS.
The aristocracy and gentlemen of England are no longer to hold a monopoly in that hitherto unique institution—a West End Club. For the future, the working man is to enjoy this luxury: he is to share with the nobleman, the prelate, the officer, and the professional, his own well-arranged, well-ventilated, comfortable house of call. Everywhere, throughout the kingdom, establishments are being formed, self-supporting, where the members can retire at any hour of the day to rest, to read, or to refresh the inner man. ”

“ But how can those who are perpetually surrounded by dusty, begrimed, repulsive, darkened houses, to whom the sun only appears through a vapour of fog, who rarely see a patch of blue sky, and to whom the greenery of nature is familiar only by report—how can such rise above the grovelling accessories in which they dwell? ”

“ What is true in this instance, with regard to a civil life, is also true with regard to the soldier. Excessive labour up to this epoch of man’s existence is sure to impair the strength and lay the seeds of future disease.
Young lads from sixteen to two or three and twenty, who are so fond of exhibiting their feats of strength, should be warned in time. From the over-straining of their muscles at this immature age, general debility is too frequently generated; they pine off before they have crossed even the very threshold of manhood, and consumption lays them low in a green grave. ”

“ They enjoy in common, they appreciate in common, those gifts of Heaven, for the heart is invariably softened and ameliorated by communion with the direct creations of the hand of God—a tree, a blade of grass, a flower evokes sentiments of a far different kind and order to those produced by the sight of the most elegant mansion or the most stately building. ”

“ The result is that London produces an artificial human being weak in body and deformed in mind. The little Bedouin of our streets is born in a densely crowded court, and bred in the seething haunts of depravity; all his faculties are stunted and perverted, and he has no healthy appreciation—no healthy enjoyment of life. ”

“ The village of Selbourne lies in a somewhat secluded part of Hampshire, about equally distant from the towns of Alton, Petersfield, and Alresford; but is easily approached by the South-Western Railway, either from Alton, or else from the little station of Liss, whence a pleasant walk of some five miles through shady lanes will bring you under the shadow of the Hanger, with an excellent appetite for luncheon or dinner at the Queen’s Arms, a country inn which can boast of good cheer, the best of eggs, milk, and butter, and a civil and honest host. ”

“ But the Editor does not examine these papers with a view to find out what they contain alone. Great is the glee of the Daily Argus if the Matutinal Medley or the Auroral Agitator has omitted an important item of home news or failed to enlighten with equal lucidity its portion of the reading public on the mysterious proceedings of a foreign government. On the other hand, should the A. A. or the M. M. be first in the intelligence-market, deep is the grief of the Editor. Here is food for lamentation, indeed, for the reputation of the Daily Argus is seriously menaced. ”

“ Houses were demolished without one thought as to where the humble, helpless occupant could go. In the construction of the new streets in St. Giles’s, of Cannon Street, of Victoria Street, Westminster, of the Blackwall railway and the Victoria Docks, a city of tenements was annihilated, and those who lived there were ruthlessly turned adrift, without shelter, or the prospect of shelter. Some idea of the enormity of this cruel thoughtlessness may be derived from a single fact: in one district alone sixteen hundred houses were demolished, whilst only four hundred were built up to replace them. ”

“ Take Drury Lane and its neighbourhood, for instance, and ask how is it possible for those born in such slums of poverty and filth ever to see a green field, or to behold the bright face of unadulterated sky, or gasp with ecstasy on imbibing a gulp of the precious country air? ”

“ The world grows mad with excitement to hear the naughty doings of naughty people described, and a column of fierce invective against an unfortunate delinquent, be he peasant or prince, peer, commoner, merchant, clerk or artisan, is read with an avidity that would be incredible did not the ledgers of the publisher reveal the truth. All these things the editor and his council have to bear in mind whilst catering for the public appetite. To them belongs a grave responsibility, and they are not unmindful of it. ”

“ Lord Palmerston addresses the House in a quiet and familiar manner, and is easy to follow; Earl Russell is slow and deliberate, weighing each word carefully as though it were gold; Gladstone is fluent as a swift-flowing stream; Bright comes next to Gladstone in rapidity and smoothness. Disraeli dashes headlong like a torrent when the spirit of invective is strong upon him, and gives trouble. Again, some journals have a more numerous corps than others ”

“ It is erected in a swarming locality, where nothing but courts and alleys, crowded with the lowest class of Irish, abound. It rises in the midst of a dreary cluster, like an oasis in a desert, and order and cleanliness, comparatively speaking, reign within its walls. ”

“ The sounds with which his ear is most familiar are those of railing and cursing; the sights which meet his eye are repulsive and demoralising—shadow, shadow everywhere—and in the thick gloom of this fearful social darkness, like cryptogamic plants, he vegetates rather than lives. ”

“ I may safely say that she is but a type of hundreds—nay, of thousands, who first see the light in these miserable alleys, whose infancy is spent, ragged and neglected, in our crowded thoroughfares, and who are liable to be trodden on by men, or trampled under foot by horses, or run over by the wheels of carts and carriages. ”

“ Uncared for, an outcast from all that is good, a Pariah from the better influences of society, an Ishmaelite, indeed, in this hand-to-mouth course of existence, this deadly struggle to obtain a livelihood—he cannot but contract the meanest habits and develope the least worthy qualities of his human nature. ”

“ The fern, the moss, the foxglove, the daphne, the wild strawberry, grasses of all kinds, tangled furze and thistles, and plants innumerable, which elsewhere would be weeds, but here appropriately adorn the garden of nature, literally mantle the banks on either side, whilst the trees which line their top thrust their roots down and in and out in the most fantastic shapes. ”

“ How can they rise to the conception of things purer, nobler, holier? The imagination has nothing on which to fasten, and the consequence is that the mind sinks lower and lower until it is lost in hopeless depravity. ”

“ Sporting has become so thoroughly an English institution that intelligence under this head cannot be neglected. We do not allude solely to horse-racing or steeple-chasing; we have our cricket-matches, and our pedestrian matches, matches at racket, and now must be included matches at swimming, all of which have been enthusiastically adopted by the British public, who will have an account of yesterday’s play, come what may. ”

“ In order to appreciate some of the causes which may be producing and extending this loss of strength in our army, it should be recollected that physical growth and development are in the greatest perfection when age, weight, and stature correspond according to a regular natural scale. The due relation between these three conditions is the best test of the normal and healthy physical development and growth of a young man which we possess, and it is unnecessary to observe that physical maturity is of unquestionable importance when considered with reference to the military strength of a nation. ”

“ It is, however, to be regretted, that Selbourne and its neighbourhood are not better supplied with streams. With the exception of the Well Head, which is a perennial fountain, there is no real river to refresh the eye as it wanders over this beautiful scenery. After a storm of rain a thousand little channels are indeed filled with a temporary flood, but these soon ebb away, enjoying only a short tumultuous existence. No landscape can be said to be perfect without water. ”

“ How young and old, rich and poor—in those days when rich and poor mingled more together than they do now, and the aged condescended to join without scruple or reserve in the innocent pleasures of the young—the village sires and the village matrons, the village lads and the village lasses, joined together in the mazy dance, or the thousand merry holiday sports of the spring and summer season! ”

“ These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the path above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride along them, but delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with the curious filices with which they abound. ”

“ They have been accustomed to see leaves and flowers isolated in window-sills, faded and dwarfed themselves by the want of pure air and natural sunlight—but fields and hedgerows and woods, uplands studded with trees, and valleys down which rippled a stream of living waters—such a picture had never entered their imagination. ”

“ Constitutional tendencies of the future man are thus more or less certainly fixed at an early age; and although at eighteen the recruit may have no evident disease, yet a minimum height and weight will indicate a constitutional defect which requires only extraneous circumstances to develope. On the other hand, again, the excessive growth of the body generally, compared with the expansion and vital capacity of the lungs, becomes sufficiently obvious by the contrast of the tall body with the narrow and flat chest, in which the apices of the lungs approach close to each other. ”

“ The interest created by a newspaper is hardly confined to a perusal of its pages. After we have devoured the motley contents of its voluminous columns, and drunk in the excitement of its serried lines of print, there comes a pause—and in that pause we naturally turn to the marvellous phenomenon of its production. ”

“ It is simply that the physique of the majority of the men is incapable of bearing up against the insidious and lethal attacks of fatigue;—the trials to which their strength is put are overpowering for them. ”

“ When a family increases in its narrow lodging, in circumstances of dirt and squalor, that increase which should be its blessing becomes its bane, and at last fever destroys what slow disease may have spared; and in a state or city the growth of a population is not a strength to be trusted, but a weakness to be feared, if improvement in its physical and moral condition is not commensurate with its extension. ”

“ If the height of the soldier is the main qualification to be regarded in selecting men, age should be considered in accordance. If men five feet eleven inches or six feet are in request, they should not be less than twenty to twenty-five years old, and the weight should be about 160 to 180 lbs. The Romans understood this necessity well. Vagacius, who wrote in the fourth century, declared that an army raised without regard to the proper choice of its recruits, was never yet made a good army by length of service, and he warns us against the error of looking for great height among young soldiers. ”

“ Whether clothed with leaves or bare, whether in summer or winter, in spring or autumn, the soft mass presents by its form and hues, a pleasing object in any landscape.
No wonder, then, that Selbourne attracts so many visitors, when it can boast of so magnificent a hill overlooking its quiet retreat. From the brow of this Hanger an extensive view is obtained. There are the hills to the south-west of Alton, on the road to Basingstoke; north-east are the magnificent Surrey Hills, stretching from Farnham to Guild ford, of which the Hogsback is the most celebrated ”

“ The crowded state of London thoroughfares, the vast and expanding proportions of London trade and commerce, required new streets to be laid down, new docks to be constructed, new railways to be pushed almost into the heart of the metropolis. ”

“ Not a single epithet is allowed to remain which is likely to compromise the views of the paper; anything that savours of a libel is rigorously struck out; the exuberant humour of each writer is chastened down to comport better with the sober taste of the public. When these alterations and improvements have been achieved, and the style and substance of each leader have passed the ordeal of an unflinching criticism, the “proofs” are sent up to the compositors. Even then the editorial labours are not concluded ”

“ By their benevolent and enterprising efforts, the Working Men’s Halls of Southampton, as well as the clubs at Notting Hill, Westminster, and Portugal Street, have been founded. It is to this female influence, felt rather than seen—we are proud to say—that these institutions owe so much of their quiet comfort and orderly arrangement.
The aim and purpose of the founders of these clubs, it is scarcely necessary to observe, is to aid the working classes towards obtaining the benefits of “social life.” By social life is meant pleasant company. ”

“ The shaft of the arm-bone continues to increase in length till the twenty-fifth year of life; and so long as this change continues, a portion of soft vesicular and growing tissue intervenes between the shaft and the head of the bone. It is not till about the twentieth year of life that this soft substance is converted into bone, and the principal bone of the arm becomes consolidated. The lower end of the bone of the fore-arm, to which the hand is mainly fixed at the wrist-joint, is also at the age of eighteen still incomplete, but it is finished at about twenty years of age. ”

“ What we would advise, and what we feel is a debt society owes to these poor outcasts who have not the opportunities or the means of studying nature in the open country, is, that the number of gardens and ornamental grounds in the metropolis should be multiplied, and that every available plot in the centre of its densely-populated districts should at once be converted into places of recreation, and laid out in a tasty manner for the benefit of the poorer classes. ”