1 88 Winter 



plunge into these acrimonious discussions, and dis- 

 course of the Bible in schools, the waning influence 

 of squire and parson, and the spread of free thought, 

 let me say at once that the heathen I speak of are 

 those of the preceding generation residing in our out- 

 of-the-way northern villages. There was always a 

 kind of outcast population who, for all the civilisation 

 they knew or practised, might as well have been 

 African savages or South Sea barbarians. England 

 did not produce the like, except in the lowest purlieus 

 and thieving kens of London. The only difference 

 was that they were less given to vice, and more 

 harmless. You could laugh at their eccentricities, 

 and not feel you were encouraging iniquity. When 

 a man and a woman felt an inclination for each other 

 I do not say fell in love, because the expression 

 was too fine and grand for their simple vocabulary 

 they simply went together, without the offices either 

 of registrar or priest. Till the time when one or 

 both went to the workhouse which, as far as I recol- 

 lect, was the end of all my favourite heathens they 

 were tolerably faithful to one another. The man 

 beat the woman just as if he had been her husband, 

 and she slanged and scolded him for getting drunk 

 and spending the money, exactly the same as if she 

 had been his wife. When children came they were 

 not christened, and I fancy the names, or rather ' to- 

 names,' Bob's Dick, and Sal's Nance, or Jenny's Mag, 

 were not formally given, but simply 'growed' to 



