far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with less life, so took his fancy that he could propriety, be introduced as subjects; whether imagine no place so proper, in the event of the conscious avoiding of all such matters in his death, to lay his bones in. This was all discourse would not have a worse look than very natural and excusable as a sentiment, the taking of them casually in our way; in and shows his character in a very pleasing what manner we should carry ourselves to light. But when from a passing sentiment our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall it came to be an act; and when, by a posibeing by; whether we should show more tive testamentary disposal, his remains were delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for actually carried all that way from England; Will's wife, by treating Becky with our cus- who was there, some desperate sentimentomary chiding before her, or by an unusual talists excepted, that did not ask the quesdeferential civility paid to Becky, as to a tion, Why could not his Lordship have found person of great worth, but thrown by the a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree caprice of fate into a humble station. There as green and pendent, with a stream as emwere difficulties, I remember, on both sides, blematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, which you did me the favour to state with or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment the precision of a lawyer, united to the ten- boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom derness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve House (startling the tide-waiters with the at your solemn pleadings, when lo! while I novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it was valuing myself upon this flam put upon pawed about and handled between the rude you in New South Wales, the devil in Eng- jests of tarpaulin ruffians-a thing of its land, jealous possibly of any lie-children not delicate texture-the salt bilge wetting it his own, or working after my copy, has till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. actually instigated our friend (not three days Suppose it in material danger (mariners have since) to the commission of a matrimony, some superstition about sentiments) of being which I had only conjured up for your tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiadiversion. William Weatherall has married tory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that purpose!) but it has happily evaded a fishy news from me must become history to you; consummation. Trace it then to its lucky which I neither profess to write, nor indeed landing-at Lyons shall we say?—I have care much for reading. No person, under a not the map before me-jostled upon four diviner, can, with any prospect of veracity, men's shoulders-baiting at this townconduct a correspondence at such an arm's stopping to refresh at t'other village— length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus waiting a passport here, a license there; the interchange intelligence with effect; the epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true present time of the receiver (Daniel); but then we are no prophets.

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot, or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically and invitingly over a stream-was it ?-or a rock ? -no matter-but the stillness and the repose, after a weary journey, 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his Lordship's hot, rest

sanction of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that canton; till at length it arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk sentiment into a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite seaworthy.

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a right friendly epistle—your puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room to the next. Their vigour is as the instant of

their birth. Their nutriment for their brief scanning ?-It must look very odd, but use existence is the intellectual atmosphere of reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to the by-standers or this last is the fine slime be regretted; for if they take it into their of Nilus-the melior lutus-whose maternal heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. their equivocal generation. A pun hath a Is there much difference to see, too, between hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack the son of a th**f and the grandson? or with it; you can no more transmit it in its where does the taint stop? Do you bleach pristine flavour than you can send a kiss.- in three or in four generations? I have Have you not tried in some instances to many questions to put, but ten Delphic palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, voyages can be made in a shorter time than and has it answered? Not but it was new it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do you to his hearing, but it did not seem to come grow your own hemp ?—What is your staple new from you. It did not hitch in. It was trade, exclusive of the national profession, like picking up at a village ale-house a two- I mean? Your locksmiths, I take it, are days'-old newspaper. You have not seen it some of your great capitalists. before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in giving back its copy?

are.

I cannot image to myself whereabout you When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest man! You must almost have forgotten how we look. And tell me what your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such a depredation! The kangaroos-your Aborigines-do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short fore puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided á priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony. We hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray is it true that the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils their

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used to exchange goodmorrows out of our old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet corner? -Why did I ?—with its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you. But while I talk I think you hear me,-thoughts dallying with vain surmise

Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become sage matrons while you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W-r (you remember Sally W-r) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks whom you knew die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,—I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The depar ture of J. W., two springs back, corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine.

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

I LIKE to meet a sweep-understand menot a grown sweeper-old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive-but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek-such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aërial ascents not seldom anticipating the sun-rise ?

of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.

There is a composition, the ground-work of which I have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in London) for the vending of this "wholeI reverence these young Africans of our some and pleasant beverage," on the southown growth-these almost clergy imps, who side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest sport their cloth without assumption; and Bridge-street-the only Salopian house-I from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys,) in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind.

I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks-poor blots-innocent blacknesses

have never yet adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients-a cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity.

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation! to see a chit no bigger than one's-self, enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni-to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades! to shudder with the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost for ever!"-to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered day-light-and chimney-sweeper-whether the oily particles then (O fulness of delight!) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told, that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly; not much unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, where the "Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises."

(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive-but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being Reader, if thou meetest one of these small penniless, they will yet hang their black gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give heads over the ascending steam, to gratify him a penny. It is better to give him two-one sense if possible, seemingly no less pence. If it be starving weather, and to the pleased than those domestic animals-catsproper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair when they purr over a new-found sprig of

1

valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate.

precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough—yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had happenedwhen the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the only Salopian house; yet be it known to thee, reader-if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that to the manifest disconcerting of the former, Hogarth but Hogarth has got him for the honours of the pavement. It is the already (how could he miss him?) in the time when, in summer, between the expired March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the there he stood, as he stands in the picture, kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever least satisfactory odours. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast.

with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth-for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it-that I could have been content, if the honour of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight.

I am by theory obdurate to the seductive

Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding such jewels; but, methinks, they should take leave to "air" them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when

This is saloop-the precocious herb-woman's darling-the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent-ness of what are called a fine set of teeth. garden's famed piazzas-the delight, and oh! fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three-halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny)—so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er-charged secretions from thy worseplaced hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the welkin-so may the descending soot never taint thy costly well-ingredienced soups-nor the odious cry, quick-reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent It is like some remnant of gentry not quite parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation extinct; a badge of better days; a hint of thy peace and pocket!

A sable cloud

Turns forth her silver lining on the night.

nobility-and, doubtless, under the obI am by nature extremely susceptible of scuring darkness and double night of their street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good populace; the low-bred triumph they display blood, and gentle conditions, derived from over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity premature apprenticements of these tender of a young sweep with something more than victims give but too much encouragement, forgiveness. In the last winter but one, I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed abductions; the seeds of civility and true

courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions; many noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance the fact; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good fortune out of many irreparable and hopeless defiliations.

such sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper incunabula, and resting-place. By no other theory than by this sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may call it), can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper.

My pleasant friend JEM WHITE was so impressed with a belief of metamorphoses In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, like this frequently taking place, that in some a few years since-under a ducal canopy-sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these (that seat of the Howards is an object of poor changelings, he instituted an annual curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was which the late duke was especially a connois- his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. seur)-encircled with curtains of delicatest It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, crimson, with starry coronets inwovenfolded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius-was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber; and, tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw exhibited; so creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard.

Such is the account given to the visiters at the Castle.-But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what I had just hinted at in this story. A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that description, with whatever weariness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions-is this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just

upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, confining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get in among us, and be goodnaturedly winked at; but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was providentially discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was quoited out of the presence with universal indignation, as not having on the wedding garment; but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity; but remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with our trusty companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first table-for Rochester in his maddest days could not have done the humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general expression of thanks for the honour