THE NEW CHIMNEY-SWEEPING ACT.

"Pellitur, paternos in sinu ferens deos,

Et vir et uxor, sordidosque natos."

HORACE.

WE shall be driven out of the house covered with soot. Matthews, immortal mimic, in taking off our western brother Jonathan, used to make him exclaim," This is a free country, forsooth, and they won't let a man flog his own nigger." Were Matthews here now, he might remark, with equal justness, "This is a land of liberty, and a man can't go up his own chimney by law till he be of age."

Our philanthropy of the present day too often appears in a questionable shape; whilst those in power, who support its pretensions, do as much mischief to the public weal, as a troop of monkeys would do to a fruit garden in the month of October. Witness the Act in question, which our assembled Solons have passed at the entreaty of certain incurable philanthropists.

Whip me those members of both Houses of Parliament, who have doomed us to the smoky

horrors of a half-swept chimney. Had I old Circe's power of witchcraft, when she changed. the sailors of Ulysses into swine, I would transform every one of them into a goose; and they should be condemned to pass down our chimneys once a month, in order to do the needful with their wings and beaks.

England is a land of chimneys. She cannot possibly do without them. There is scarcely anything in the whole routine of our domestic economy, that requires more consideration than the state of our chimneys. A chimney that answers well the end for which it was built is a treasure of no small value; whereas a defective chimney is productive of so much annoyance, that it has very aptly been placed. in the catalogue of miseries brought into a house by the tongue of a scolding wife.

There are some placid people in England who are for ever on the look out for objects whereon to exercise their philanthropy. Did the imprudent interference of these good people bring expense and inconvenience on themselves alone, nobody would care to complain; but when every householder in Great Britain suffers both in purse and person, through their

unnecessary interference, then it is that one feels authorised to take up the pen and show how philanthropy may sometimes cause mischief in its workings. Witness the late unfortunate expedition* up the river Niger. Witness the subject of the present memoir.

It makes one sick at stomach oneself, to see people straining dismally at a gnat in the shape of a little chimney-sweep, and then to perceive them swallowing, with great ease, a camel, under the figure of a poor and unhealthy operative employed in the factory.

Benevolence is certainly a heavenly feeling. A generous heart will always rejoice to see it operate in alleviation of real misery and oppression. Being doomed by Omnipotence, through the original sin of Adam, to gain our daily bread by the sweat of our brow, it requires considerable reflection, ere we set about to alter the long-established customs of our country; lest, by an ill-judged interference, we do more

* I was consulted on the probable issue of that lamentable undertaking. I used every argument in my power to prevent its taking place. On seeing that my arguments were of no avail, I said: “If you are determined that the experiment shall be tried, go yourself, in person, and then you will have the melancholy satisfaction of falling with the other victims."

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harm than good. Tantum ne noceas, &c. Let us remember that we are all creatures of habit; and that custom has been pronounced our second nature. He who has been well trained to labour, feels neither irksomeness nor pain in the performance of his ordinary task; although the spectator who has been brought up in a different manner, might fancy him to be both weary and miserable.

We are too often misled by appearances, and too apt to judge of another person's feelings by our own. I know one, who, both in winter and in summer, rises at half-past three o'clock in the morning. He takes his nightly repose in a room not over and above replete with dormitory comforts; and I have heard him say, that this custom is neither hard nor unpleasant to him. Still, another person, who studies personal comfort, and who likes his feather-bed, would consider it to be any thing but comfortable. So it is with the little chimney-sweep. He has been pitied for imaginary hardships; and at last driven, by Act of Parliament, out of employment, for supposed miseries to which he had been a stranger.

To see, begrimed with soot, a pretty face, on

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which there ought to be the rose and lily: — meet a tattered urchin riding on a donkey, with his soot bag for a saddle; or perhaps trudging barefoot along the road; all this impresses on a philanthropist the idea, that the lot of this youth is miserable, and that it must be amended. us take a nearer view of this little son of soot. See the beauty of the rogue's teeth! - they are as white as ivory, for the soot has polished and preserved them, whilst our own are discoloured and some of them gone to decay in spite of old Rowland's Odonto. His back too is as straight as a lance, and his limbs of the finest proportions. His voice informs you that he knows not sorrow; for he whistles as he goes along; and every now and then, beguiles the length of the road by some favourite ditty. And when he has performed his task up to the chimney's top, he crows there, like the morning cock, to tell us all is right, and that we ourselves ought to be stirring.

The little sweep is the gnat, to which I alluded in the beginning of this paper. I meddle not with the camel. The celebrated Mr. Ferrand has already taken it in hand. But is there no danger nor difficulty in ascending a