Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.

“It is the scenery, I suppose.  That will make you praise every thing for the next day or so.  It will not do, though.  We must walk on our feet, and be prosaic in this world.  The poor are not as poets paint them, nor is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect.  The poets are like you—­they have nothing to say but praise.  Ah, me! they draw largely on their imaginations.”

“I do not, sir, in this instance,” I answered, somewhat nettled.  “My most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life.  I am proud to say so.  I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves.”

“I believe you, Mr Stukely,” answered the incumbent in a more feeling tone.  “I am not fond of theories; yet that’s a theory with which I would willingly pass through life; but it will not answer.  It is knocked on the head every hour of the day.  Perhaps it is our own fault.  We do not know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant and helpless.  Just step in here.”

We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill.  It was a low dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it.  One window was in the cob-wall.  It had been fixed there originally, doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light, not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants, was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before.  A child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair, unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was heard within.  Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and a gruff voice desired him to “come in.”  A stout fellow, with a surly countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire, and a female of the same age and condition was near him.  She bore an unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery.  There was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed down to the solitary coverless saucepan.  Need I add, that the man who sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting, however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving family with bread?

The man did not rise upon our entrance.  He changed colour very slightly, and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.

“Well, Jacob Warden,” said the incumbent, “you are determined to brave it out, I see.”  The fellow did not answer.