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cancers of the scrotum; the witness never saw but two instances of the former, though several of the latter. Mr. Cline informed your committee by letter, that this disease is rarely seen in any other persons than chimney sweep ers, and in them cannot be considered as frequent: for during his practice in St. Thomas's Hospital, for more than forty years, the number of those cases could not exceed twenty; but your committee have been informed, that the dread of the operation which it is necessary to perform, deters many from submitting to it; and from the evidence of persons engaged in the trade, it appears to be much more common than Mr. Cline seems to be aware of. But it is not only the early and hard labour, the spare diet, wretched lodging, and harsh treatment, which is the lot of these children, but in general they are kept almost eutirely destitute of education, and moral or religious instruction; they form a sort of class by themselves, and from their work being done early in the day, they are turned into the streets to pass their time in idleness and depravity: thus they become an easy prey to those whose occupation it is to delude the ignorant and entrap the unwary; and if their constitution is strong enough to resist the diseases and deformities which are the consequences of their trade, and that they should grow so much in stature as no longer to be useful in it, they are cast upon the world without any means of obtaining a livelihood, with no habits of industry, or rather, what too frequently happens, with confirmed habits of idleness and vice.

In addition to which, it appears, that from the trade being constantly overstocked, a large proportion of the older chimney sweepers (as it is stated, one half) are constantly in a course of being thrown out of employ. Your committee have endeavoured to learn the number of persons who may be considered as engaged in the trade within the bills of mortality; they have learnt that the total number of master chimney sweepers might be estimated at 200, who had among them 500 apprentices; that not above twenty of these masters were reputable tradesmen in easy circumstances, who appeared generally to conform to the provisions of the Act, and which twenty had, upon an average, from four to five apprentices each; that about ninety were of an inferior class

of master chimney sweepers, who had, upon an average, three apprentices each, a id who were extremely negligent of their health, their morals, and their education; and that about ninety, the remainder of the 200 masters, were a class of chimney sweepers recently journeymen, who took up the trade because they had no other resourcewho picked up boys as they could -- who lodged them with themselves in huts, sheds, and cellars, in the outskirts of the town, occasionally wandering into the villages round: and that in these two classes, being in the propor tion of 180 to twenty, the miseries of the trade were principally to be found. It is in evidence before your committee, that at Hadleigh, Barnet, Uxbridge, and Windsor, female children have been employed.

Your committee observe, that in general among the most respectable part of the trade, the apprentices are of the age prescribed by the Act; viz. from eight to fourteen; but even among the most respectable it is the constant practice to borrow the younger boys from one another, for the purpose of sweeping what are called the narrow flues. No accurate account could be obtained of the ages of the apprentices of the other classes; but they had the youngest children, who either were their own, or engaged as apprentices; and who, in many instances, it was ascertained, were much below the prescribed age: thus, the youngest and most delicate children are in the service of the worst class of masters and employed exclusively to clean flues, which, from their peculiar construction, cannot be swept without great personal hazard.

Your committee have had laid before them an account of various accidents that have happened to chimney sweepers, by being forced to ascend these small flues: they beg leave to refer particularly to a recent case, which occurred on Thursday the 6th day of March, 1817, and which is contained in the minutes of evidence: they wish also to direct the attention of the House to one of those instances of cruelty, which terminated in the death of an infant of about six years of age, in the month of April 1816: William Moles and Sarah his wife were tried at the Old Bailey for the wiltul murder of John Hewly divus Hase'y, by cruelly beating him. Under the direction of the learned judge, they were acquitted

of the crime of murder, but the husband was detained to take his trial for a misdemeanor, of which he was convicted upon the fullest evidence, and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

The facts of the case were, that this infant was forced up the chimney on the shoulder of a larger boy, and afterwards violently pulled down again by the leg and dashed against a marble hearth; his leg was then broken, and he died a few hours after; on his hody and knees were found sores arising from wounds of a much older date. But it is not only the ill-treatment which the regular apprentices suffer from the cruel couduct of some masters, that your committee are anxious to comment on; it appears that in order to evade the penalty of the Act of Parliament, some of these masters frequently hire young lads as journeymen who have not been apprenticed to chimney sweepers; these are children who have no parents, and who are enticed away from the different workhouses of the metropolis.

Having thus shortly detailed the leading facts of the evidence which has been given before them, of the miseries which the unfortunate class of beings who are sold to this trade experience, your committee have with great anxiety examined various persons, as to the possibility of performing by the aid of machinery what is now done by the Jabour of the climbing boys: the result of their inquiries is, that though there may be some difference of opinion as to the extent to which machinery is here applicable, yet the lowest calculation of practical and experienced persons, master chimney sweepers themselves, who have been brought up in the trade, establishes the fact, that of the chimnies in the metropolis three fourths may be as well, as cleanly, and as cheaply swept by mechanical means as by the present method; and the remaining part being, on the very greatest calculation, one fourth of the whole number, with alterations that may easily and cheaply be made, can be swept also without the employment of the climbing boy. Mr. Bevans, an architect much conversant with buildings in the metropolis, has no doubt that ninetyfive out of 100 can be swept by the machines that are at present in use; and he has also no doubt that, supposing there was to be a legislative enactment that no chimney should be swept

by the means of climbing boys, that easy substitutes could be found that would sweep every chimney that now exists. He adds, that though there may be difficulties in cleaning an hori zontal flue, from the quantity of soot, yet it is equally bad for the boys as for the machine; because the boy, as he comes down, has an accumulation of soot about him, which stops up the circulation of air necessary to support life. So that it is evident, in all those chimnies where, under their present construction, the machine cannot be used, the hazard of loss of life to the boy who sweeps them is most eminent.

Some of these flues are stated not to be above seven inches square; and one of the witnesses, who relates this fact to the committee, informs them that he himself had been often in hazard of his life; and that he has frequently swept a long narrow flue in Goldsmiths Hall, in which he was shu: up six hours before his work was finished. Upon a review then of the evidence of the evils necessarily belonging to this trade, as well as of the remedies which have been suggested,- First, in the substitution of mechanical means, thus superseding the necessity of employing children in this painful and degrading trade; and, Secondly, in allowing the system to continue in the main as it is, with only those amendments to the existing law, that may attempt to remedy the present practice;-your committee are decidedly of opinion, that no Parliamentary regulations can attain this desirable end; that as long as master chimney sweepers are permitted to employ climbing boys, the natural result of that permission will be the continuance of those miseries which the legislature has sought, but which it has failed to put an end to; they therefore recommend, that the use of climbing boys should be prohibited altogether; and that the age at which the apprenticeship should commence should be extended from eight to fourteen, putting this trade upon the same footing as others which take apprentices at that age: and, finally, your committee have come to the following resolution: Resolved,

That the chairman be directed to move for leave to bring in a bill for preventing the further use of climbing boys in sweeping of chimnies. 23 June, 1817.

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from the end of one line into the beginning of another (a beauty in blank verse, but a fault in couplet composition), instead of having the expres sion completed with the word that rhymes. The illustrations are some

WHEN an author has acquired un- times absurd and unnatural. For in

usual celebrity by a small composition, it is natural to inquire into the circumstances on which that celebrity is founded. Perhaps no literary performance of equal size ever conferred upon its writer a portion of fame equal to that which Denham derived from his "Cooper's Hill." To what has this been owing? Was it because, according to Johnson, it was the first specimen among British authors of local poetry ? Doubtless this was a principal cause; though Shakspeare had long before introduced into one of his plays a beautifal sketch of real local scenery, in the instance of Dover Cliff. Still, however, Cooper's Hill may be considered as the first distinct and complete specimen in the English language of landscape poctry embracing objects not firtilious, but real. This, therefore, was the principal cause of the author's celebrity; yet this alone would not have been sufficient; other concurring circumstances must be joined with it: namely, the choice of landscape, and the manner in which it

has been executed.

The point of view which Denham selected exhibited grand and interesting scenery. London is the farthest range of the eye-here the royal battlements of Windsor-there the ruins of an ancient abbey-the plain of Runnymede and the Thames majestically flowing in the fore-ground.

It must be confessed that the poet has depicted with great spirit the various objects that appeared before him; and that by introducing moral, political, and historical reflections, he has given an additional charm and interest to the whole. He has pourtrayed the rapacious and despotic Henry the Eighth in just and vivid colours; he has so expressed himself on the subject of the Thames, as to have associated his name with that river, so long as that river shall run; and who can read his desscription of the Hunted Stag without mixed emotions of melancholy delight? But if Cooper's Hill has many beauties, it has also some imperfections. The versification is in many places rugged and inharmonious; and we too often meet with seutences continued

Europ. Mag Vol. LXXII. July 1817.

stance:

As rivers lost in seas, some secret vein Thence reconveys, there to be lost again. Never was a river lost in the sea, and thence reconveyed by any secret vein or subterraneous channel, therein to be lost again, except in a poet's fancy.

Again; the comparison of the Thames to a bird in the act of incubation, O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,

And hatches plenty for th'ensuing spring, is without fitness or diguity.

There is much obscurity, if not unintelligibility, in the following lines: Can knowledge have no bound, but must a Ivance

So far, to make us wish for ignorance,
And rather in the dark to grope our way,:
Than led by a false guide to err by day?

As before remarked, the character of Henry the Eighth is well delineated. truction of an abbey? The suppression But why lament so much over the desof monastic institutions was a happy event for Great Britain, although we actuated the person by whom that work cannot but execrate the motives which was accomplished. In this instance, the vices of the Sovereign, paradoxical as it may sound, were a blessing to the nation.

After all, it may be doubted whe sideration would have conferred upon ther the descriptive poem under conits author that high degree of celebrity which it did, but for the number of general reflections or axioms with which it abounds; as, when mentioning the inhabitants of the metropolis, the poet

says,

Where with like haste, tho' several ways they run,

Some to undo, and some to be·ndone.
And when marking the rapacity of
Henry the Eighth, he says,

But wealth is crime enough to him that's .poor,"

And when describing that tyrant's abuse of power, he says,

But prince's swords are sharper than their styles.

E

When depicting the distress and per- overturning, broke at the same mo

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THE Major threw himself into a corner of the chaise, and fell into a kind of waking nap, in which the gay visions of Hope were mingled, such as you may fancy (to save me the trouble of describing them) to occupy the mind of a man just arrived from the East Indies, and enduring all the miseries of travelfing during a December uight in unfrequented cross roads, impelled by the strong desire of once more beholding the authors of his being and the place of bis birth- he was fancying the mingled pleasure and surprise of his revered parents, on their beholding him after a period of ten years when time had transformed the fair boy of fifteen, who with a heavy heart left their fostering care, seeking fame and fortune in a foreign clime, to the full-grown man, who returned with rank and riches equal to his loftiest ambition.

He was indulging most luxuriously in these fairy visions, when the postillion, with a carelessness usual to his fraternity, in galloping his horses down a steep declivity, threw down one of the unfortunate animals; and the chaise

ment one of the wheels and the chain of the Major's thought, in a manner no less abrupt than unpleasant.

Luckily he was not hurt; and having extricated himself from the shattered vehicle, he vented his anger in some pretty sharp reproofs on the luckless driver, who made all possible attempts to avert his displeasure, by assuring him, that the fault lay in the horse, or rather in the horse-dealer" Please "it's all the your honor," said he, fault o' that cheating tyke, Ralph Martingale, the Yorkshire horse-dealerhe warranted the horse sound wind and limb, and free from blemish, only a week ago and now he turns out both lame and blind; he has been out only three times, and every time he has come down, but neverso bad as this before,”—This he accompanied with touching his hat at every syllable, and "Your Honor" at the end of repeating every word, according to the rule most religiously observed by all post-boys. -Maurice stopped his excuses, by inquiring whether there was any house near where the chaise could be suffi ciently repaired to enable him to continue his journey. The lad said that there was a small ale-house at a short distance, but that he doubted whether at that hour he should be able to pro cure any assistance. Maurice was much vexed; his anxiety to reach his home, then but a few miles distant, had been gradually increasing as he drew nearer, and now his hopes were likely to be disappointed: the darkness was impe netrable on either side, and a violent thunder-storm, accompanied with a heavy rain, began to pour upon them. He desired the boy to go on to the house he had mentioned; who taking one of the chaise lamps in his hand, and leav ing the horses, of whose running away he said there was not the least danger, one being lamed with the fall and the other quite blind, they proceeded to the house, which was within a few hundred yards,

A comfortable fire in a large sanded kitchen, the only sitting room in the house, greeted him on the door being opened; the rustics who surrounded it instantly drew away to make room for the stranger. Maurice took off his coat; and while the boy was gone with the man who officiated as waiter, boots, hostler, &c. &c. to ascertain the damage done to the chaise, he sat down before

the fire, to observe the characters in the room. On a bench at the further end sate some labourers, who were dis cussing over their evening draughts the affairs of their different masters and the state of crops, &c. in the same manner as the mechanics of London talk of the ministry and the price of stocks. Upon a seat near the fire sate a Jew, who travelled with his box of merchandize through the country villages, selling trinkets, rhubarb, &c.: this worthy was a native of Duke's-place; but having been in his youth in the occupation of a candle-snuffer at a minor theatre, where he had studied stage-effect, and fancying that a foreign dress would con fer an imposing appearance, and was calculated to give importance to the medical part of his profession, he had takeu the habit of a Turk, in which he How travelled.

While Maurice was amusing himself with observing these characters, the post-boy returned with intelligence that the chaise was too much damaged to admit of his proceeding on his journey. Maurice was much vexed-the post boy made an attempt at what he considered consolation, by telling him, that if the chaise had not been so much da maged, the horse was too lame to go on. No horses or conveyance could be obtained from the house; and even if he had been inclined to proceed on foot, the storm continuing with unabated violence would have prevented him. He found, therefore, that he must stay there all night, however unwillingly; and he made up his mind to endure the evils which he could not remedy, with a degree of resignation and philosophy, which I would recommend as an example for my irritable readers.

The countrymen had by this time departed, and the Jew had retired to the loft. Maurice now asked the landlady whether he could be accommodated with a bed. She said she feared but indifferently, for that the room ap propriated to the guests was occupied by a young man who was supposed to be thea at the point of death-but added, she would do the best she could to render him comfortable. He thanked ker; and then asked her, whether the dying man was a guest, or one of her own family. She said he was a guest that he had lived there for some months about three years ago; since which time she had not seen him until within the last two months, when he came again

evidently much broken in constitution. She said she feared he was not quite right in his mind; for although at some times quite cheerful and merry, he was at others absent, and did not seem to know what he was doing - that he would sometimes walk about in the church yards all night-and added, that she thought he had been crossed in love, poor gentleman, for that he wore a miniature of a lady tied about his neck with a black ribbon. She said, that every one respected him, the chif dren of the village all doated on him, he was the companion of their sports, and their adviser in all their difficulties -he had now kept his bed for some days, and she feared he would never quit it alive-she believed he was in a decline-the clergyman of the parish was then with him, at his own request,

Maurice was must interested in the woman's account of the dying man: and the truth of it was undoubted in his mind, for during the recital the tears had stood in her eyes. He expressed a wish to see the gentleman; for the purpose of offering his as sistance, if it could be of service. The landlady thanked him, and requested him to follow her: leading the way up a small staircase, she conducted him to a chamber, the door of which she gently opened, and in a whisper desired him to waik in- he entered.

Upon a low bed at the end of a small, but clean, room, lay the emaciated form of a young man the light of a candle on a chair, shaded by the form of the clergyman of the parish, who was kneeling by the bed side, cast a gleam on the countenance of the sick man; some curls of dark brown hair, which had escaped from under his cap, bent over his cheek, which bore a hectic flush, and but for the sunken ap pearance of his face, and the languor of his eyes, might have been mistaken for the glow of health-a little girl about twelve years old, the daughter of the hostess, stood beside him sobbing with suppressed but violent emotion;

the ecclesiastic had concluded his prayer, in which the dying an ap peared to have been joining; and breathing a low but fervent assent to the devotions he had been engaged in, he drew his eyes from the upraised position in which they had been placed, and turning them on the weeping girl, he calmed her sorrow, and endeavoured to console her. Maurice had entered

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