dren; relief is given to large families by taking those children into the house which are a burthen to their parents; the fame method is in fact practifed by all; confequently the children are taken in very young. A N LETTER XLVI. Neceffary attention to the duties of a magiftrate, together with compaffion for the diftreffes of my poor neighbours, particularly for those who were employed in daily labour on my farm; had occafioned me to vifit, at times, the fick cottager, and the miserable pauper in a parish workhouse; the fituation of the first, whofe narrow tenement forbad the poffibility of feparating the fick from the well, the parent from the children, or the children themselves from each other; that miferable œconomy in fitting up the cottage, which too generally has denied the only bed-room, either a fire place, or a casement window to ventilate the air; the noife of querulous children; the the ftench of confined air, rendered epidemic by morbid effluvia; the vermin too frequently fwarming on the bodies and rags of the wretched inhabitants; all these causes acting together procraftinate affliction, prevent a return of health, and indicate a depth of mifery, which hard labour and industry ought not in fickness to be liable to endure; neither did the parish workhouse, the last sad refuge of miferable indigence, offer a lefs difagreeable fpectacle; the want of room, and the bad management of that which they poffefs, occafion fimilar inconveniences; the cloaths, or rather the covering of the inhabitants; the improprieties arifing from the two fexes of all ages, and difpofitions, long kept together; the ignorance and filth the children are brought up in; and the general spirit of rigid œconomy which the contracting mafter of the workhouse practices, as well in diet, as in cloathing, lodging, and cleanliness, to fcrape from mifery, as foon as poffible, a property which may enable him to retire from his difagreeable avocation, give propriety to the opinion and expreffion; that a parish workhoufe, is a parifh bug bugbear, to frighten distress from applying for relief. In the incorporated hundreds, the houses of industry strike one in a different light; they are all of them built in as dry, healthy, and pleasant fituations, as the vicinity affords; the offices, fuch as the kitchen, brewhouse, bakehouse, buttery, landry, larder, cellars, are all large, convenient, and kept exceeding neat; the work-rooms are large, well aired, and the fexes are kept apart, both in hours of work and recreation. The dormitories are alfo large, airy, and conveniently disposed; separate rooms for children of each sex; adults and aged; the married have each a feparate apartment to themselves; mothers with nurse children are also by themselves. The infirmaries are large, convenient, airy, and comfortable; none without fire places. All the houses have a proper room for the neceffary difpenfary; and most of them a furgeon's room befides. The halls, in all, are large, convenient, well ventilated, with two, or more fire places in them, and calculated with respect to room, for for the refection of full as many, as the other conveniences of the house can contain. The chapels are all fufficiently large, neat and plain, feveral of them rather tending to grandeur and elegance; there were two houses, which had no chapel, one of them made use of a room ample enough for the congregation, properly fitted up, and kept very neat; the other house attended the parish church. The apartments for the governor were in all the houses large, and conveniently difpofed; in one or two of the houses of industry, these apartments were rather more fpacious, and elegant, than neceffary, there are also convenient storehouses, and warehouses, for keeping the manufacture of the house, the raw materials, and the cloathing, &c. for the use of the inhabitants. The land about the houses, belonging to them, particularly the gardens; are all calculated for producing a fufficient quantity of vegetable diet; fo neceffary to the health, as well as agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants. In general the appearance of all the houses of industry, in the approach to them, fomewhat refembles, what we may fuppofe, of the hofpitable hofpitable large manfions of our ancestors, in those times when the gentry of the country spent their rents among their neighbours. The interior of thefe houfes, must occafion a most agreeable furprise, to all those who have not before feen poverty, but in its miferable cottage, or more miferable work house. In looking over my notes, I find that the affirmative neatnefs, which prevailed from the cellar to the garret, in all the houses, with very few exceptions in particular departments; occafioned not only a memorandum of the fact, but gave rise to a conception, which poffibly lies more in imagination than reality; that where a deficiency in this refpect is obfervable in any domicile; a concomitant deficiency, is also obfervable in the healthy looks of the inhabitants. This neatnefs which had fo pleafing an effect on the eye, was the caufe also, that the other fenfes were not difgufted by that conftant attendant on collected filth and foul air ; a noifome stench; as deleterious to human life, as it is in general naufeating to those who accidentally breathe fuch an atmosphere. The |