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ADVANCE OF THE WORKING CLASSES-WHY popular discussion and agitation. Our wants are greater,

DO NOT THEY RISE HIGHER?

NOTWITHSTANDING the reports of distress among the working classes, which from time to time reach our ears, and the intense competition to which all must submit who depend upon their labour for their subsistence-the weak going to the wall, while the strong and skilful keep the crown of the highway-there is yet sufficient reason to believe that the condition of the working class generally does not deteriorate, but is gradually and steadily improving. It would be painful and deplorable were it not so, at a time such as this, of rapidly increasing knowledge and civilization among men. Even the very worst conditions of social existence at the present time are not so bad as those which have prevailed at former periods of our history. The golden age of past times, when closely looked into, resolves itself into a state little removed from barbarism, when a few great proprietors monopolized the land and people alike, and the labouring man was but a serf, without liberty, without property, without recognised rights of any kind. That the working classes suffered intensely in those times, all history testifies, though newspapers were silent--for as yet they were not. The press is a birth of comparatively recent date, and to its labours chiefly are we indebted for the faithful pictures of the actual condition of the working classes of the present day. In former times no one cared for the people, they suffered in silence, died, and were forgotten; for the world was occupied mainly with the doings of statesmen and politicians, battles and revolutions, court intrigues and state quarrels, though all the while there was a strong undercurrent of misery and wretchedness. There was no Health of Towns' Commission then, no popular associations to improve the condition of the people, no peace societies, no reform movements, no temperance societies, no land and building societies; for the people had not yet discovered the enormous power which lies in the co-operation and association of their means and energies for the common good. Now, a host of active agencies are at work; an evil is no sooner pointed out than a remedy is proposed; laws are devised for the amelioration of the general lot, wherever practicable-or at least, if not yet enacted, they are undergoing the necessary sifting of

our notions of life are more elevated than they have ever before been. We have become more exacting, and are more dissatisfied; all this induces active exertion and bespeaks social progress. We have pauperism and suffering, it is true; but it may be, and doubtless it is in a great measure the growth or condition of the civilization which we now enjoy. Poverty is made more galling by the comparisons which it provokes with the luxury and comfort existing by its side; where the condition of poverty is general, its degradation is scarcely felt. Poverty is itself a strong stimulus to action in a civilized state: it necessitates benevolent exertion on the part of the intelligent and the wise. It is probably one of the strongest incentives to progress, forbidding us to rest until we have subdued and overcome it; it is this very civilization we have reached that makes us so alive to it that makes us inquire into it, and feel so anxious to discern its true remedy. What is more popular now than what is called "the condition of England question?" We begin to feel that as poverty is the result mainly of our imperfect institutions and social arrangements, so may better institutions and arrangements be brought to bear in the removal of the evil. suffering may thus be but the transient integument protective of some initiative good, which will drop off as the flower matures and the fruit ripens to perfection.

Social

Working men generally estimate their social position by their wages, and the amount of necessaries and comforts they will secure; and if we inquire into the wages of workmen in past times, as compared with the current wages of the present day, we shall find that the workman has not retrograded, but materially advanced. Mr. Macaulay has produced abundant evidence to show that the wages of labour, towards the close of the seventeenth century, were greatly lower than they are now. The average wages of the agricultural labourer was only from 2s. to 3s. a week with food, or from 4s. to 5s. without food-a rate of wages very much lower than that which prevails in even the most poverty-stricken of the agricultural districts of this day. And at the time of which we speak, be it remembered, food was often very high in price-wheat being as much as 70s. a quarter. P.ivate foot soldiers at the same time were paid only 4s. 8d. a week, and there was never found any difficulty in obtaining thousands of English recruits at a very short

which he has to rise. To be satisfied is to repose; while, to be rationally dissatisfied, is to contrive, to work, and to act, with an eye to future advancement.

notice another evidence of the low remuneration then be first made dissatisfied with the lower condition out of paid to the labouring classes generally. The average wages of English mechanics and manufacturers at the same date, was about 1s. a day; and it was not always that they could get as much. But there were no newspapers then to advocate the working people's cause, and they must either take what was offered them or starve. And what are the wages of such labourers now? The mason and carpenter who was then able to earn only from 6s. to 7s. a week, with food dearer than at present, now earns from 25s. to 30s. a week; while the artisan and clothworker, who frequently had considerable diffi-struction; mechanics' and operatives' institutes are culty in getting more than 4s. a week, is now able to make from 15s. to 20s. Even during the Commonwealth times, which are still cherished in some of the country districts as the " golden age" of England, a turn of great prosperity being yet spoken of in some parts of Yorkshire, as "Oliver's days," it is an ascertained fact that, with the price of food rather higher, the workman received rather less than one quarter of his present wages. The workman then rarely tasted meat-hundreds of thousands of families never touched it, and sugar, tea, coffee, and such like, were luxuries for the most part beyond their reach. At that time children's labour was by no means unknown in the manufacturing towns. At Norwich, which was then the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of the time, and among them some who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact that in that single city, boys and girls of tender age created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence, by twelve thousand pounds a year. The existing Factory Bill, which deals so tenderly by the juvenile labourers in factories, shows certainly quite another spirit from that which prevailed in remoter times.

It might be asked-Do the working classes generally avail themselves, to the full extent, of the advantages which they now possess as compared with the men of their condition in former times? They have within their reach the means of mental improvement, self-culture, and the development of the best powers of their nature, the press teems with publications devised for their infounded and maintained for them. Do the working men avail themselves adequately of these means of improvement? If so, how are we to account for the fact, that not one-half of the members of mechanics' institutes generally belong to the working classes? There are more than a hundred beershops and public-houses supported by the working classes, to one mechanics' or other educational institute; and a competent authority has esti mated that the family of each working man in England expends on an average £19 a year in drink, whereas for 12s. or 15s. a year they might, if they chose, become members of the best mechanics' institutes; but the beershops thrive, while the institutes droop. Is there not reason also to believe, that working men are not sufficiently careful to economize their means, with the view of accumulating a little store of capital to secure their independence, and shelter themselves and families when sickness or old age comes upon them? There are few mechanics receiving 30s. a week who might not contrive to save a trifle, which, in the course of a few years, would accumulate to something important. A large proportion of the better paid mechanics and artisans might insure their lives for the benefit of their wives and families, living respectably the while; but the number who so insure is as yet extremely small. Half-a-crown a week laid by in the Savings' Bank would be something towards

proportion of working men who think of such a próvision A large proportion of the well-paid mechanics and artisans might easily lay by weekly more than the sum we have named, were they to abstain altogether from investing in the beerhouse. And unless they do so make up their minds to economize and save, when employment is abundant, it is our belief that the working classes will fail to rise into a position of independence and true respectability. This subject has been well discussed recently in the columns of The Builder, and several working men have there taken up the question warmly, and spoken several strong truths on the subject. One of them writes as follows:

If we come down to a more recent date, we find the condition of the labouring man still inferior to that of the present day. In 1730, the daily earnings of the brick-providing against the evil day; but how very small is the layers employed at Greenwich Hospital (as appears from the records of that institution), averaged 2s. 6d. a day, with corn and all other necessaries of life higher in price than they now are; the same description of labourer now receives from 4s. 10d. to 5s. a day. Even as late as the year 1800, Mr. Sydney Smirke states on good authority, that the wages of a good mason in London were only 16s. a week, with wheat at 90s. 6d. a quarter; whereas the same labourer now receives from 30s. to 33s. a week, with wheat at under 50s. a quarter, and all other necessaries of life very much reduced in price. As Mr. Macaulay well observes-"the more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely one exception, old; that which is new, is the intelligence which discerns, and the humanity which remedies them."

The working man is now more of a citizen than ever he was before. He is a recognised power, and many are already knocking at the door of the constitution, and calling loudly for his admission within its pale. For him mechanics' institutes, newspapers, benefit societies and all the modern agencies of civilization, exist in abundance. | He is admitted to the great domain of intellect; and, from time to time, great thinkers, artists, engineers, philosophers, and poets, rise up from among his order, to proclaim that intellect is of no rank, and nobility of no exclusive order. The influences of civilization are rousing society to its depths; and daily evidences are furnished of the steady rise of the industrious classes into a position of respectability and great social power. Discontent may, and does, exhibit itself; but discontent is only the necessary condition of improvement, for a man will not be stimulated to rise up into a higher condition unless he

"I am a married man, with a wife and five children, who are dependent on my exertions for their support. Being a working mechanic, my income is (when employed) £1 10s. a week. My parents, thirty years ago, were similarly situated, with about one-third of this income. From them I learned a lesson of economy. The great question with me is, what quantity and quality of the necessaries of life are most conducive to promote health, strength, and happiness. Guided by the wise in former ages, and by my own experience, I have long since come to the conclusion that man's real wants are comparatively few. I have found, therefore, in past years, that two-thirds of my income will sufficiently supply myself and family with the necessaries of life; that onesixth of the same will meet the casualties of loss of employment; the other sixth, which is 5s. a week, or about £10 a year, is laid by for sickness or age. This trifling sum, with interest and compound interest, in a few years will make a poor man comparatively rich. Now, I am persuaded that there are thousands of working men who, if they would make an honest statement of what they spend foolishly, would find the amount of money so spent much

more than I pretend to save; and they are often laying themselves under the necessity of giving 20 per cent. for pledges of their property, when at the same time they might, by resolution and good management, be receiving instead of giving interest for money. Let these hints be received in the spirit in which they are given. Let them excite an honest ambition to raise ourselves from that state of degradation in which too many of us are found. Better times approach but slowly to the sluggard and the profligate; I might rather say, they are always retreating from him, while the industrious and frugal are overtaking them every day."

one of the larger of the concentric circles which surround everybody, and “the doctor's boy" amongst others. Each individual exists in his own particular world, a kind of terrestrial planet, perhaps better known by the name of "circle of acquaintance," and the special orbit by which our sub-gallipot is surrounded, looks upon him as a species of wisdom constellation, darting rays of medical science upon its ignorance, to use his own especial term,, "free gratis for nuffin," and he plays at physic with the same perfection that pugnacious juveniles play at war. Being on shaking-hands terms with himself, and possessing a large fund of Anglo-Latin brain teazers, got by heart from the gilt bottles on his master's shelves, he can clench an argument right through, instanter, to the perfect annihilation of other boys' understandings, and thus he comes to be regarded with respect, which is not at all decreased by his known association with the. sombre great man of the neighbourhood, who is supposed to initiate him in the dread arcana of most mysterious medicine. To him, his uniform is as the apple of his eye, the robe of honour which betokens his professional novi-. ciate.

Our own opinion is, that the working classes very much under-estimate themselves, and do not assume that social position which they are really entitled to occupy. They are wanting in that proper ambition which every man ought decently to cherish. They themselves seem, by their attitude, to encourage the notion that there is something degrading in labour; than which nothing can be more false. Labour of all kinds is most honourable and dignifying; it is the idler who is, above all others, undignified and socially useless. It is because the working man does not aspire, does not value himself properly, Enveloped in the magical garb of science, he walks. that his position remains so equivocal, and relatively about as if encircled in a water bubble, which wants but inferior; measured by the rate of remuneration paid to the slightest puncture from a query to disperse itself workmen, they are equal to most of the classes which we around, almost drowning you with a cataract of words. peculiarly regard as respectable. Nearly all our skilled The key-hole of the consulting room, or one of the cre-. mechanics and artisans are better paid than the average vices in its door, is the medium by which he peruses his of our working curates. The working engineer is better pharmacopeia, the hand book to his own private practice. paid than the ensign in a marching regiment; and the Observation begets imitation, consequently he soon foreman in any of our large manufacturing establishments acquires the solemn shake of the head, and the precise is generally better paid than the army surgeon. A London and proper nerve-thrilling pressure of the thumb and mason receives 30s. a week, while an assistant navy-sur- finger upon a patient's wrist. Not unfrequently he stugeon receives only 148., and after three years' service 21s., dies the use of the stethoscope, by operating upon a with rations. The majority of dissenting ministers are worse younger brother with his mother's kitchen funnel. He paid than the higher class of our skilled artisans and is imbued with the proper orthodoxy of his profession, mechanics; and the average of clerks employed in ware-and hath a fit and proper antipathy to "quack," or even houses and counting-houses receive wages considerably advertising M.R.C.S.'s. He regards new heretical pracinferior to theirs. It is our opinion that working men tices as dangerous to the public health, and considers might, and ought, to occupy a social position equal to that a knowledge of phrenology or of mesmerism, as a proof of any of the classes we have named, were they so dis- of deranged intellects, and as the coma state of common posed. What is it that prevents their rise in most cases? sense itself. He, even more than his master, regards It is, we fear, the want of due mental cultivation-the medicine as a science of practice, not theory, and reading neglect of their intellectual powers-the want of early but little, makes the very utmost of what he does read. education. It is, after all, the education and culture of Like his master he calls the patients by the generic a man's mind that determines his position in society; and name of "cases," and he will tell you of a terrible case of: it is because, as a class, the working class are inferior in scarlet fever, or a bad case of a burnt child just come in, those respects to others, that they are as. yet excluded, with as much nonchalance as your boot-maker does of a self-excluded in many cases, from the social and political case of American overshoes just received, in fact, in time privileges which they are entitled to enjoy. We believe of sickness, his brain is as full of cases as a bonded warethat by the spread of knowledge only-by the education house. He is the primary lecturer of the unfledged of the children of the working classes in public schools, medical apprentice, and in the elongated cupboard and their after education in the mutual improvement which rejoices in the ostentatious title of "Surgery," societies, people's colleges, and mechanics' institutes, surrounded by myriads of pots, bottles and jars, and over that the working people of England are to be elevated in the pestle and mortar (the novitiatory vessel of medical all ways, morally, physically, and socially; and it is, life) a friendship is sworn, not unworthy of "Orestes and therefore, with no small share of hope and joy that we Pylades." Like most other boys (at least of the world) hail the important movement, recently started by an asso- he holds between his teeth a two-edged weapon of wit, ciation of working men in the metropolis, for the Pro- and is never at loss for a reply. Manifold are the duties motion of National Secular Education, as of the most im- of a doctor's boy, and great the labour, of his legs in parportant of all means towards this great end. ticular, for when he does not sleep under the counter, or in some secret recess of the learned bedstead which occupies a corner or recess of the surgery under the disguise of a bookcase, they, (the legs) must be at the street door at an early hour of the morning, well oiled with good will, and ready for a long day's perambulation. Then, when he has swept up the surgery, and by dint of much friction made the counter as slippery as a sheet of ice, and worked up the scales to the brilliancy of a looking-glass, cleaned numberless little phials and placed them upon the many twigged bottle tree indigenous to "Doctor's" shops, in such a manner that ignorant little boys who come in. for some more castor oil for the baby," frequently have. dark doubtings as to the possibility of their being ever

Pen and Enk Portraits.

ERRAND BOYS.

SECOND ARTICLE.

HIGH up in errand boy ranks, stands "the doctor's boy," familiarly known amongst his compeers as “the doctor," and who, if not a M.R.C.S., is at least an attaché of the learned profession which gives those titular initials. The world, in its superciliousness, may think but little of him, but then, the world is not everybody, but merely

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blossoming bottle plants from which "Doctors" pluck chosen for their extreme natural altitude so is the body bottles as plentifully as gooseberries from a bush. Yes, guard of a modern "Blood" sought for the opposite quathen he has to "get himself up" for the counter, or his lity. He must be a multum in parvo edition of humarounds, as may be, for the first, if he has been sufficiently nity, sufficiently diminutive to repose in the pocket of his long in the establishment. If admitted to this duty he master's box coat, yet large enough to manage a "cab is in high glee, and packs bottles and pills in such a horse." He must have the size of the mous, the manner that none but chemists can, some importance strength of the elephant, and the eyes of the lynx-he and great care being necessary in this department, he must be "well up" in the winning horses of the three performs it con amore. His next heaven, which by the last "Derby's" "Doncaster's" and "St. Leger's," and way he can never reach except in a small establishment, | be able to form a tolerably good conjecture of the favourand then seldom further than to an ounce of "cold ites for the next. Like his master, he can make, if he drawn," a box of "Cockle's," or a pen'north of hair oil, never reads, a book. He must outstrip the ostrich in is serving; when not employed in the latter, he sits speed, and run of an errand with the rapidity of an elecbehind a small desk at the end of the counter, having tric telegraphed communication. Being perfectly au fait before him, sometimes a real, but frequently an imaginary at effect, and as anxious for its exhibition as a lady with list of patients, to which he adds the name of any new a new brougham, he has the new cab, spotless as his own sufferer who may call to see the doctor, and nicely he boots and buckskins at the door, at least an hour before distinguishes between the "Advice Gratis" and the it is wanted, disposing of the first half, with gently putold established paying cases. How grandly he sup- ting the horse through its paces up and down the street, ports the professional dignity when, during the doctor's hanging, with innate pride, his highly pipe-clayed gloves | absence, he is vicegerent of numberless bottles and galli- over the apron, with one eye nervously fixed upon his pots. It is no use telling "the doctor's boy," that master's door, when, at the least signal, he leaps from the Mr. must come directly, for he will tell you "he vehicle, arranges the apron, touches his hat with the can't, and that's all about it," and show the before men- quickness of thought, but is too well-bred to mount till tioned list, besides telling you of the terrible "case," the horse has started, when after having watched with the "the doctor" was up with all the night before. The glance of a cat at the first movement of a mouse, getting doctor home from his visits, the boy prepares to take out his little legs up to high-pressure running point, with the ordered medicines, and who does not know the supernatural activity he runs a few yards and springs as doctor's boy with his livery jacket, gold-laced hat, and suddenly, upon the fast disappearing cab as only his queer little covered basket? And who is he like, or forest sponsor can upon its prey. As crests upon the to whom can you compare him, but himself? What a helmets of mediæval barons were emblematic of high, so tax upon his memory is this duty, and how important are tigers in the cabs of modern lordlettes emblems of its proper and careful execution! One cannot glance "fast" blood, and we think too frequently significant at him without thinking at the same time that he is a of the pace of their masters' morals. The ancients messenger of life and death, either greatly depending endeavoured to profit by the intellectual culture of their upon his intelligence, and yet how rare are accidents from slaves. These moderns, though perhaps deeply learned his want of care. Notwithstanding the multiplicity of in the latter fact, draw the curtain of ignorance tightly names, numbers, and of bottles in his basket to be deli- over the eyes of their servants, that it may profit vered, he is as cool as his master at a "post mortem" their own whimsicalities; and consequently reading, and setting at defiance the old axiom about "Time and writing, and arithmetic is required of the tiger, only as Tide waiting for no man," he never goes his rounds far as it may render him capable of delivering a note, without endeavouring to fasten the drag chain upon the chronicling a memorandum, or paying a toll-keeper, and wheel of the former old gentleman. Whether he considers the increase of his mental, like that of his physical stait vulgar or not to be seen in a hurry, we know not, but ture, however beneficial it may be to his future, is the he seldom makes haste. This may be from his love of grave of his present employment. To remain in high social intercourse with other boys in the streets, with whom favour, he must be as non-growable as if struck out of he has always time and inclination to play at "marbles," humanity complete with one blow of the die, like the or leap-frog, and to discuss the merits of theatrical pic-crested button upon his coat. We sorrowfully regard tures in shop windows, or if of a literary turn, by flat-him as a misappropriated atom of the Creator, one of the tening his most prominent facial organ against the panes many excrescences on the surface of civilization, an erupof glass, in order to clearly understand the contents of the tion from the gourmandism of luxury, a lamp of light first page of a periodical exposed for sale. And who that burning in a mistaken atmosphere, one of the edges of has ever heard of the old axiom "All work and no play God's intellect turned awry, and blunted for mental makes Jack a dull boy," can blame the " doctor's boy" progress, by the pleasures of, to use the mildest term, the for "loitering" a little upon his errands? For, like his thoughtless. master, the hardest worked of all professionals, he must snatch moments of amusement from every little crevice which he can find, among the countless hours of toil wedged so firmly in the basket of his life. His is the old tale of the "horse at the mill" a perpetual grinding of the same corn for the production of his daily bread. See him now, reader, gently jogging his onward way, and prithee let him loiter. If he is slow, he is sure-if you hurry him you may flurry him, and getting physic in haste, like a wife by the same precipitation, you must at leisure repent, or to say the least, instead of its castor oil, Mrs. Jones's baby may get the cough mixture tended for the asthma case in the next street.

The "tiger" mania has much subsided amongst the higher classes. They are becoming to be thought as ridiculous behind vehicles, as the forest animals themselves would be deemed dangerous in their shafts. The emancipation of this race from the thralls of ignorance is at hand, the tiger is becoming "beautifully less," and fast taking his place in minor history, by the side of court fools, and dwarves ;-notwithstanding the faint efforts of the fast young gentlemen of the middle classes, who, struggle now and then to produce a copy of the high-life tiger, from the boys employed in their fathers' countingin-houses or shops.

Not least prominent among the whirligig planets of the "Errand boy" orb is the "Tiger," we mean the veritable and inimitable London Tiger, who to be acknowledged as such, must be the "picked" of his race, and as much set apart by nature for his express calling as the "Life Guards," for as the latter are

We have heard of the infantine legend, which teacheth the economy of nature, in "cutting up all the old moons into little stars;" so the old tiger, who having rebelliously grown out of tigerhood, and thereby extinguished his own brilliancy, becomes reduced from the state of a planet of his orb, to a domestic satellite, well known as page or footboy; and 'tis well that the imitative facul

ties of the English have generated so vast an amount of pseudo-grandeur-for the many little domestic theatres in which this feeling is exhibited, are so many homes, resting places for the run-to-seed tiger. A small family has large ideas slumbering, which being ruffled by a "wind-fall," begin to effervesce, boil, bubble, and froth into genteel notions, and the half-way hope of a footman is the product. They must have a page, who, though in all cases individually the same, is the polished specimen of the identical material, out of which is wrought the tiger, having an affinity with each other, yet being separate and distinct. The page is a remarkable exemplification of the instinctive antipathy of human nature to "retrograde." The rough edges of the tiger may be smoothed down by the domestic halo which surrounds the dinner table and impregnates the kitchen, into a social animal; but the page can no more return to the savage-making atmosphere of the stable, than can a good City cheesemonger relapse into the wild ideality of the Ojibbeway Indian.

Happy is the footboy, who is the first of his race in his situation, for then is his uniform fitted to his size, and he is the type, form, and pattern of his descendants, for like the armour of the ancients, or the gorgeous garments of our ancestors, is his uniform handed down as a kind of universal fit. They may boast of the perfection of the abstruse science of coat cutting, but the tailor's art must have neared perfection, and have performed its chef d'œuvre when it produced the footboy's jacket. The coats and armour of our predecessors were made "near the mark," and possessed a padding admissible of alteration, but not so the page, the first of his race must be fitted as tightly as the pattern dresses of the tailors' wooden men, or, as if cut out of a fashion book—and all his successors, at least while the habit is at all tenantable, must fit as tightly as the first, the latter being a sine qua non in a boy on approval: surely nature must mix in the composition of those marked out for the profession a solution of gutta percha or india-rubber. "It's a great bore this expense," said a lady to us one day, who to our astonishment was giving her page a glass of diluted Geneva. "I am obliged to do it daily." "For why, madam?" was our innocent reply. "Because I like the boy. His obesity increases most obstinately, and we can't afford to throw away money upon a new jacket.", We smiled, but inquired no further, the inference was obvious. The lady, who by the way had risen from the obscurity of a housemaid's position to independence, had carried with her the superstition that "strong waters" retard the growth of animals. Multifarious are the various duties of the footboy, and to perfection he performs them, if kept in a good state of drill by the lady of the house. See with what grace he touches his hat, if he has it on, and if not, his hair in saluting you. Remark with what earnestness he will tell you that "Master's not at home," though you may have seen him pass across the hall just before; how accurately he measures the length of your patience, and opens the door when your foot is turned to leave the house, after a quarter of an hour's knocking; he has by heart the kitchen maxim, that "a good servant knows himself too well to attend upon the first ring." Notice again on a sultry summer's day, how nobly he bears up against the heat on a "state" occasion, when perhaps, it is but the extreme tightness of his dress prevents him from melting away-how happy is he in the "retort courteous," acquired from his vast practice with the housemaid and cook, with whom by the way, he is seldom at peace, for the boy with the tyrant notions of a Lordling of the creation, looketh upon female servants as but weak women, whilst he himself is of the world. The servants in return designate him "a small puppy;" upon the whole, the position of a page among the feminine members of the kitchen, is as equivocal as that of a marine among

sailors, and though it is only upon occasions that the bubbling discontent felt by both parties boils over the brim of propriety, the passions are continually simmering, and war breaks out, when the one encroaches upon the time or dignity of the other. "My place indeed," says cook; "me clean the scuttle, you impertinent feller, no; I know's my place, and see if I don't tell missus when she comes down, how you only cat-lick'd it yesterday morning, when you was learning them nasty songs three yards for a penny." "Well, cookey, and missus wont think so much o' that neither, as she will of some people who asks big sodger cousins on Sunday evenings into other people's kitchens, to drink other people's teas, and so and so, cookey," replies the boy. "You imNow, that's a good boy, you know it's only my fun";and peace is proclaimed between them. Not to speak of the twelve dozen knives and forks, the twelve pairs of boots and shoes, and the profusion of habiliments, that make their moving appeals to him for their diurnal rub, the footboy has not the easiest position in the world. He is a domestic chrysalis, waiting with anxiety the lapse of a few years, to develope him into a full-blown footman. When the heavy counterpane of night is gradually thrust aside by the deep grey streaks of early morn; when the snow is spread for a moment like a huge mantle of purity on the pavements; when the hoar frost tints the trees in the squares, the lamp posts, every little ledge and crevice, making murky London upon a level (the only time it bears the happy resemblance) with the sweet country, shaming the fog-demon of the town with a contrasting hue, and making him hide his hideousness, like a new made bride her blushes beneath the hallowed sanctuary of her veil; when nature visits once more the busy haunts of man, stamping her signet upon his habitation with salutary sarcasm, reminding him in the midst of his artificial abstraction-his idolatry of £. s. d. pleasures and passions-of the pristine starting point, when nature alone was adored and held rule in hearts pure as her own snow. 'Tis on such a cold biting morn in crystal glittering winter, when the servant shudders as she leaves her bed, when ladies remove from their sleeping to their breakfast rooms, wrapped in furs like hot rolls in flannel, to keep them from nature's purifying chills, that the veritable "errand boy" of London is to be seen to the best advantage running along the streets, sustaining his circulation by an occasional slide in the gutters, and flapping his arms about like the sails of a windmill.

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'Tis then that his portrait may be seen with drapery, en suite, and typical of the hardihood of his life; 'tis then that he puts to the blush the fancied troubled; 'tis then that the rough gem shines in its natural setting, when in defiance of frost-bitten nose, benumbed fingerends, and as far as feeling goes, toeless feet, he trips along to his work, with a joke for every milkman and housemaid he meets upon his way. His duties are many, and he performs them rather with the sureness of the tortoise, than the swiftness of the haro. If attached to a shop-keeper, his ambition is pointed to the counter. If in a manufactory, he is the hand-boy of the workmen-much hath he to put up with, and many tempers to please. If his master has a family he hath necessity for much diplomatism, for he becomes the bosom friend of the young master and mistress, and as however juvenile young masters and mistresses may be, they still know their social position. He is in some sort like the favourites of princes, the higher their favour, the more likelihood of their tumbling headlong by a “trip up" of arrogance, though we are not quite sure that the pride sometimes exists on the part of the errand boy, for he regardeth himself as a little man, being conscious of the dignity of labouring for his own living-and in the petty squabbles, notwithstanding that he has always before him the fear of losing his bread, he never forgets the independence of labouring boyhood,

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