talk, I think you hear me-thoughts dallying with vain surmise "Ay 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 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 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 little left to greet you, of me, or mine. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY SWEEPERS. I LIKE to meet a sweep-understand me-not 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 aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise? 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. 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 Bounding 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 daylight-and then (oh 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." 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 twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. There is a composition, the groundwork 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 palute may rel ish 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 "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 particular lip in a pasin 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 elegances, 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 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 pos sible, 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. 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 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 over-night vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume as he passeth; but the astisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. This is Suloop-the precocious herbwoman's darling-the 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 thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny)-so may thy culinary fires, eased of the overcharged 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, the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines from ten adjacer' 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 particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out a 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, irremoveable, 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 might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight. I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a fine set of teeth. 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 "A sable cloud Turns forth her silver lining on the night." : It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge of better days; a hint of nobility and doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood and gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and almost infantile 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. In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since-under a ducal canopy--(that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visiters, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a connoisseur)-encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets inwoven -folded 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 noonday, 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, he 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 have 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 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 pre-existent 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 the belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the vearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were ssued 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 |