But a new scheme, "The maintenance of the poor in a common mansion erected by the Hundred," seems to have been in force in Suffolk, and up to that time confined to that county.

It differed from the workhouse of to-day apparently in this respect, that there was not even an attempt to separate the young and old, the sick and the healthy, the criminal and vicious from the respectable and honest.

Yet Crabbe's powerful picture of the misery thus caused to the deserving class of inmate is not without its lesson even after nearly a century during which thought and humanity have been continually at work upon such problems.

The loneliness and weariness of workhouse existence passed by the aged poor, separated from kinsfolk and friends, in "the day-room of a London workhouse," have been lately set forth by Miss Edith Sellers, in the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_, with a pathetic incisiveness not less striking than that of the following passage from the Eighteenth Letter of Crabbe's _Borough_:-- "Who can, when here, the social neighbour meet?
Who learn the story current in the street?
Who to the long-known intimate impart Facts they have learned, or feelings of the heart?
They talk indeed, but who can choose a friend, Or seek companions at their journey's end?
Here are not those whom they when infants knew; Who, with like fortune, up to manhood grew; Who, with like troubles, at old age arrived; Who, like themselves, the joy of life survived; Whom time and custom so familiar made, That looks the meaning in the mind conveyed: But here to strangers, words nor looks impart The various movements of the suffering heart; Nor will that heart with those alliance own, To whom its views and hopes are all unknown What, if no grievous fears their lives annoy, Is it not worse no prospects to enjoy?
'Tis cheerless living in such bounded view, With nothing dreadful, but with nothing new; Nothing to bring them joy, to make them weep; The day itself is, like the night, asleep." The essence of workhouse monotony has surely never been better indicated than here.
_The Borough_ did much to spread Crabbe's reputation while he remained, doing his duty to the best of his ability and knowledge, in the quiet loneliness of the Vale of Belvoir, but his growing fame lay far outside the boundaries of his parish.

When, a few years later, he visited London and was received with general welcome by the distinguished world of literature and the arts, he was much surprised.