forgotten how we look, And tell me what your Sydneyites do? are they th**y*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 pick+ pocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided à 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 poils their scanning ?-It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to regretted; for if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. Is there much difference to see, too, between the son of a th**f and { the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you bleachi in three or in four generations? I have many questions to put, bu but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do you grow your own hemp ?-What is your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your locksmiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.org/wo

7

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Temple. Why t did you ever leave that quiet corner? Why did I?-with its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyedi barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in na thirsty August, when I revert to the space that isan between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete g 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 it

Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores

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 Wr) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks whom you knew die of every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,—I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The departure 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 fittle left to - greet yon, of me, or mine..

[Something of home matters I could add; but that, with certain remembrances never to be omitted, I reserve for the grave postscript to this light epistle; which postscript, for weighty reasons, justificatory in any court of feeling. I think better omitted in this first edition.]

I

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

LIKE to meet a sweep-understand me-not a grown sweeper-old chimney-sweepers are by no attractive—but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings no 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 ?

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

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth— these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, · preach a lesson of patience to mankind. k.

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

adlew togbrid rotodemo witness their operation! to see a chit no bigger than one'sself enterone knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni-to pursue him in imagination, as The went sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, So many horrid shades! to shudder with the idea that now, surely, he must be lost for ever! to revive at hearing his feeble evelight shout of discovered day-light-and then (O fulness of delight!) running out of out of doors, to com to come just in time to see the osable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel seem to remember having been told, that a bad Sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate stack von 200 which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, cerindenfentit de direction in Macbeth, Itainly not much unlike the old stage where the "Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in or rotted sit his hand, rises."

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny,-it is better to give him two-pence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed

heels

unusual

be

the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. I ansThere is a composition, the ground-work of which I have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. This dowood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an sinfusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy Isbeyond the China luxury, I know not how thy palate may To relish it for myself, with every deference to the judicious defau TiMr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he ayers in London) for the vending of this wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street the only -Salopian house I have never yet adventured to dip my own Ju particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients to cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whispergoing to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due withmet courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, evotherwise daco of not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies, sup it up with

avidity.

I know not by what particular conformations of the, organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper-whether the oily particles (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 penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals-cats-when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. di

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 hardhanded artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their 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.

This is saloop-the precocious herb-woman's darlingthe delight of the early gardener, who transports his

smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent Garden's famed piazzas-the delight, and oh! I 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 but three-halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny)-so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed 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 parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket!.

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than forgiveness.-In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed 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 happened—when 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 par ticular, 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 soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him?) in the March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman-there he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever-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...