malady, incidental and incurred; in cleansing from deepest stain, the catalogue of human ills to such we are indeed indebted; their youth is consumed in laborious research and intense personal labour, their riper years spent in a great measure by the couch of poverty, sickness, and pain; and yet how seldom are their talents appreciated, their claims to public and individual gratitude duly weighed! One, at least, is sensible of the weight of eternal gratitude due to them for the honour they have conferred on human nature, in shewing by splendid successful example, how much evil may be removed by a patient thorough investigation of natural causes, a contempt of bigotry and prejudice and a hearty desire to extirpate error, by the introduction of truth, her opponent."

LETTER XIII.

THE next day L said, "It is time you should see some individual instances of the hollowness of the system I have endeavoured to analyze; of the exquisite misery produced by man in a gregarious state, allowing inequality and gradation at wide intervals, to become the basis of his social compact. We will take a turn along the streets; I predict we shall go but a little way ere you will be struck with some particular objects of suffering humanity observe the passengers we meet, and ask an explanation of any remarkable dress or demeanour."

Out we went, and had scarcely walked a stone's throw, before we encountered one of the "species," in appearance the most grotesque and shocking: it was a lad of low, slight form, covered all over with a dust, black and offensive; his hair, his clothes, every pore of his body, were absolutely saturated with its particles; the only parts that retained a natural hue, were his teeth and eyes, which formed a striking contrast with the rest of his

figure: he shuffled along with gait painful and tottering, drawing his breath hard from cold, and tracking his pathwith blackness; followed by a companion in misery, smaller than himself, whose tears made furrows in the mask on his face, as he bent beneath a bag which seemed to contain a heavy portion of the particles which caused its blackness. As this vision brushed against us at the corner of a street, I caught the arm of L——, exclaiming, involuntarily, "My God! what is this? Are these human creatures, what is their occupation which has left but a mockery of the human form? "Yes," said L, "these are two of the 'genus homo' as we are, two children of human Nature, like thousands more, deserted by humanity two beings, born with the same capacity of enjoyment as ourselves, like us, heirs to all the happiness and pleasurable emotion, call it by what name you will, which are common to the human race, and of which their nature is susceptible."—"What then,” said I, "is the meaning of their appearance, so disgusting, so dreadful?"-" The meaning," said he, "is very simple, and easily explained; in a word they are chimney sweepers.' "And what's a chimney sweeper?" I enquired.

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"A chimney sweeper is a man, or rather a piece of mechanism, who picks up a bare sub

sistence by gathering filth from the passages through which the smoke ascends from our fires to the upper air: look round you; you see these great buildings, tenanted by false riches, pride, ambition, voluptuousness, gluttony; and how they rise, story above story, to the roofs, surmounted by rows of funnels, that serve for the escape of the smoke which pours through them: this smoke deposits in its way a thick black crust, which being inflammable, must be often removed by some means. The only mode of clearing it effectually, is to send up a child with proper implements; he ascends through the noisome passage accordingly, by dint of labour with hands, back, and knees; emerges through the aperture at the summit, there yells his feeble shriek, announcing his important arrival to all whom it may concern, and then commences the task of clearance, by dsecending; using brush and shovel as he goes. A linen is drawn over his mouth and nostrils, else would the inhalation of the noxious dust release his misery by death from suffocation: his task completed, he drags his emaciated frame to the next mansion, and there begins to toil afresh; and so from house to house, till the day is far advanced, when sinking under accumulated sufferings and soot, he crawls to his den of

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wretchedness, exhausted, despairing. I mentioned his working until day was far advanced; in explanation I should add, that as if to aggravate the horrors of his situation, he is like the post-horse so feelingly described by our poet, "forced to shake refreshings lumber from his eyes," long before the dawn of each succeeding day to rouse from the deep sleep of childhood, at the stern bidding of a master generally hardened and depraved in a prior school of similar suffering: of the tyrant, to whom he was consigned as a beast to its driver, to feel the lash of avarice and ferocity, under the nicknames of diligence and proper correction by these means his spirit is soon broken, "he is one of his employers best boys :" his frame is checked in growth by premature labour, "He is a useful hand: he can climb where stouter boys cannot."

"Oh, horrible!" said I, "and can no plan be devised to supersede the employment of these hapless beings?"-"None," said L"under our present system of building: as long as our dwellings tower, story on story, so long must this work of misery and death be followed. When man returns to the humble roof of the cottage, round whose lowly chimney the ivy and woodbine cling, then, and not before, by the easy expedient of passing a