appeared of nights out of a gigantic convolvulus, the West Indies. Father was a cook. (Oh, or a mammoth rose, under the admirable-ar-my Indian princess!) Father is dead. Mother ranged moonlight of Messrs. Grieve and Telbin, makes soy; she sells it; She sells soy, andin a Haymarket extravaganza. (Here a long list of sauces, etc., ran glibly off "To this complexion she must come at last!" like a shop-advertisement.) That is how we thought I, watching the agile grace of her de- live. We are very poor. Yes, we like scent from the semi-circle, the glitter of some coming to school very much. We shall learn to foreign-looking armlet on her delicate brown help mother in time." And so on-and so on. arm, and the evident consciousness of that, and I am about to inquire and remonstrate conof her own extreme prettiness, with which the cerning the shiny bracelet, which looks so odd poor child joined the troop of her compan- and out of place in a Ragged School. But peerions, a troop that irresistibly inclined one to ing into the little girl's face, a certain shyness parody Robert Browning's "great-hearted gen- comes over me, as if I had no business to pull tleman" as it went the mote out of the eye of the poor man's child. Besides, she elders it with such tender protection over the little sister--and there she is, turning to pat, and looking as if she greatly wanted to a song which was meant to be explanatory of dif- cuddle, that rolly-polly fellow, who is stretching ferent trades, with imitative mechanical accom- out of the babies' den, and clutching at her frock. paniments, greatly satisfactory to the performers. Who knows, Ragged-School influences may end Even the little babes in the den crept on all-fours in her growing up as some kind young misto its outermost barrier, viewing, and clapping tress's pretty nursemaid, instead of the gauzy little dirty hands. fairy of Haymarket footlights, with a future of

Marching along, twenty-score strong,
Ragged-school children singing, this song-

No-I beg pardon, excellent Ragged-School God knows! mistress-they were not dirty. I never saw a But Mrs. Readyhand was longing after her cleaner, neater, wholesomer charity-school. public nursery, so we prepared to leave the good When one thought of the horrible London al-schoolmistress and her flock-the younger porleys they came out of and went back to, their tion of which, my friend again observed, “would tidiness was really miraculous. be better up stairs."

"I teach the bigger ones to mend their things," "Please don't say so, ma'am," said the missaid the mistress when we noticed this; "and tress earnestly; "they do no harm. They are sometimes kind ladies send us parcels of old very good little things. Indeed, I could'nt bear clothes, and we manage to alter and contrive. to part with my little ones." Generally, the children get decently clothed That is the right sort of a woman," said when they have been at school a little while. Mrs. Readyhand, as we went up stairs. Besides, we give them some sort of a dinner, It was a large room, scrupulously clean and and it is often quite late before we send them neat. At the further end was a row of eight or home." ten iron swinging-cots, with mattresses and cov"What homes some of these must be !" erings. There was a coal-cellar and linen-closet, "Likely enough. But we take all sorts; we a large table, and several chairs some for ask no questions. You see, when they first come great, some for little people. The whole room here, they are such little things. Nothing like was in perfect order-the boarded floor without beginning in time.”

"But you don't teach them all day over ?" "Bless you, no; I only let them amuse themselves, and keep them out of mischief-babies

and all."

stain or dust. The atmosphere, rigidly sanitary and airy; in fact, rather too airy, for the fire was powerless to warm it beyond its immediate vicinity. There was a decently-carpeted hearth, a chair, a round stand, etc.; in which snug little "Ah, that reminds me we must go and see encampment, with her tea-things laid, and her the babies up stairs," said Mrs. Readyhand, newspaper in her hand, sat the nurse. giving up the chubby boy whom she had had in Now, my good nurse, I have no wish to her arms all this while, and who seemed very un- malign you. You were a very decent, respectwilling to be so relinquished. able, fat, motherly body, with an apron as spot"But would you like to question any of my less as your floor, and as smooth as your counchildren first? Here"-following my eye, and tenance. I have no doubt you know your duty, summoning (I am not sure that if you always do and do it, too, within its prescribed limits. But this it will be advisable Mrs. Schoolmistress) how could you sit sipping your tea, and reading that prettiest and most intelligent brown-faced your newspaper, over your cosy fire, while in maiden. She came, accompanied by a smaller the Arctic regions beyond-outside the verge of and plainer sister, and answered various inquiries carpeting-three blue-nosed, red-fingered little mannerly enough, though with scarcely as many nurse-maids were vainly trying to soothe or to blushes as one likes to see in a child. keep in order five or six babies-from the small (I month-old lump of helplessness to the big uncould not make out either.) We came from ruly ten-months' brat, which is perilling its life

"My name is -; my sister's

-as every mother knows-by various ingenious to me, please. Now Sally" -And laying the exploits, about once in five minutes, all day long. child across her lap, she held its blue feet in Ler "Ladies-pray sit. Our ladies generally come hands, supplying, in her own gentle way, various of mornings. I am very glad when they do. I bits of information, verbal and practical, to the have a hard place here (Betsy, do keep said Sally.

"It'll begin again the minute you lay it down, ma'am. I daren't nurse the babies, else they'd never be out of my arms."

that child off the carpet.) They don't allow me Nurse looked on with considerable dignity at help enough nothing like enough, ma'am. first; but in answer to a hint about "food," and Only these three chits from the Ragged School a commendation of the kind of infant nutriment Sally, can't you quiet that baby ?). Indeed, supplied gratis by the nursery, she began busily ladies, you don't know what it is to look after to prepare some, and the kettle at once vacated poor poeple's children.” in favor of the pap-saucepan. There was a certain truth in this- —a pitiful truth Gradually, motherly experience did its work; enough, though she did not put it so. No one, the infant ceased crying. whose sole experience in the baby-line, lies among the well-fed, well clothed, well-tended offspring of the respectable classes, can see without pain the vast difference between them and "poor people's "But they soon learn to crawl—my children babies." Especially the London poor. Their do. I always let them, as soon as they can. pinched, wizzened faces; their thin flaccid limbs, Look, Betsey-didn't I hear nurse call you shivering under the smallest possible covering of Betsy ?-you have only to keep near, and watch threadbare flannel and worn-out calico; their it—see that it doesn't hurt itself, nor go too far withered, old-like expression, so different from away from the fire. This is bitter weather for the round-eyed, apple-cheeked simplicity that little babies. And, Sally-yes you are quite well-to-do parents love-no wonder it was rather right to listen and notice; always do so when hard to keep in healthy satisfied quietness poor nurse or the lady-visitors talk to you, and you'll people's babies. Babies, too, who from morning learn everything in time.'

till night, seldom or never know what it is to "There's much need on't" grumbled the headcuddle in warmly to the natural nest-the moth-functionary; but her subordinates heard not. er's own bosom. Of course, nothing can sup- They made quite a little group round Mrs. ply the place of that; and, of course, it must Readyhand, each laden with her small charge, be a hard position, my respectable old woman! whom she handled very much as she would a to be nurse in a public nursery. But surely doll or a kitten. Meanwhile, the eldest baby you need not have talked so much about it, or devoted its tender attention to me, crawling we should have sympathized with you a great about my skirts, and taking hold of my shoe, deal more. looking up all the while-ugly, little, thin elf We began to investigate the condition of the as it was with that soft infantine smile which six babies-small, sickly creatures most of them I defy any woman to resist. One could not sprawling quietly on the floor, or resting open-well help giving it a toss and a dandle, and eyed in a sort of patient langor in any posi- laughing when it laughed-even to the missing tion the little nurse-girls chose to place them. of many things Mrs. Readyhand was saying. There was one especially which kept up a piti- Not in any formal way-she abhorred all cant. ful wail-not a good hearty howl, but a low I did not hear her use one of those irreverently moaning, as if it had hardly strength to cry. familiar Scripture phrases which abounded Mrs. Readyhand paused in her statistical en- rather unpleasantly on the nurse's lips, and quiries about the nursery, which, however, were on the walls of the school below stairs-where, fast verging into a mild recipience of the nurse's I fear, their large-lettered literalness-such as, "the blood which cleanseth from all sin," and "Ladies, you see, I haven't help enough-such "the eyes that are over all"-must have proved a set of ignorant young chits! Sally, can't you extremely perplexing to infant minds. But keep that child quiet? Ma'am, it's only frac- this is a question the judiciousness of which cantious; not quite a month old-I don't like 'em not well be discused here. so young, but then the mother has to go out And when, on our departure, she brought charing.' her kindly admonitions to a climax, by hinting O ye happy mothers! languid and lovely, that if the little damsels improved very much, receiving in graceful négligée admiring female she, or other ladies she knew, might possibly friends, who come to congratulate and sym- come and choose their next under-nursemaid pathize, and "see baby ”—just think of this! out of this very Ragged-School nursery, it was My friend took the matter in her kind hands. really pleasant to see the blushing brightness "Sally, my girl,-isn't your name Sally?—you which ran over every one of the three faces, hardly know how to hold so young an infant. common as they were, either prematurely sharp Not upright-it has not strength yet;—and its or hopelessly dull. But the dullest smiled, and little feet are quite cold. There, not so near the the sharpest listened with a modest shyness, fire-you would scorch its poor head. Give it while thus talked to. It was the involuntary

woes.

POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.

confirmation of Mrs. Readyhand's doctrine-| "Yes; busy, active sowers. I would like to the only reformatory hope of the universe-the hunt them up, far and wide, and give them doctrine of Love. work to do. Work that would fill up the

We talked much as we went home-she and blanks in any home-duties they might have, yet I-about this scheme; its wide possibilities not interfere with one; work that would preof good, and the defects-where will you not vent their feeling-as I know scores of them find defects in all schemes of its working out. do-that they have some how missed their part "I object," said I, "to one great fact in this and place in the grand ever-moving procession public nursery-the nurse. Her heart is not in of life, and have no resource but to lounge idle, the matter. She is a fine contrast to the capi- or lie torpid, by the wayside till death overtal Ragged-Schoolmistress. If I were a lady- takes them." visitor, I'd bundle her off immediately."

66

"That is true. You talk as if you had been an old young lady' yourself."

66

My dear, you are too summary. You might not readily get a better. Her situation is a Perhaps so once; and my little daughters very difficult one to fill properly. Think what may be. Nobody knows. Now, what think it requires. All the common sense and firm- you? If we could only give to all the old ness of an experienced nurse-all the patience young ladies,' as you call them, one simple task and tenderness of a mother: a perfect nurse and duty-the looking after poor people's chilwould be perfect indeed." dren. Setting aside all that is done, or is "She isn't." found impossible to do, for the grown-up gen"Perhaps she only wants looking after. eration, and beginning with the new; beginning Most hired servants do. She needs us, who from the very first; in short with"habitually think more deeply and act more "With a public nursery? Well, they might wisely than is common with her class, to take do worse. Many a middle-aged lady keeping an interest in her duties, and thus show her house in some dull parental home, or tormented that they are ours likewise. If this were but by a brood of lively juvenile sisters, might find possible! If one could but seek out the rich very considerable peace of mind and lovingidlers of our rank of life, and make their kindness from an occasional hour spent in looking dreary, useless lives cheerful by being useful!" after poor people's babies. Then, not ending "Useful to the lower rank of workers?" with them as babies. Following them up to "Exactly. Think of all the women whom childhood-planning public play-grounds and we know, and what numbers that we don't public working-grounds; I like those a great know, who, having passed their first youth, are deal better than even Infant Schools. Teaching absolutely withering away for want of some- them especially-what ought to be the chief thing to do. "Something to do "-that grand aim of all eleemosynary aid-how to help cry, spoken or silent, of all unmarried and un- themselves. Would not this be one good way likely-to-be-married womanhood; "Oh, if I of silencing the lazy outcry about elevating had but something to do!" the race?' Better, perhaps, than-this sort

It was very true; I could have confirmed my of thing." friend's remark, by half-a-dozen instances under She pointed to an election-cab, crammed inmy own knowledge. side and out with worthy and independent "And the grand difficulty is, how to answer voters, glorious in shirt-sleeves and drink, shoutit. What are they to do?" ing at the top of their voices for the successfnl

"Surely no lack of that, Mrs. Readyhand. candidate. Never was there a wider harvest, nor fewer laborers."

"Lord has won, you see. Well, I am glad. He is an excellent young man, they say. "Because, my dear, they don't know how to Perhaps he may be got to take an interest in fall to work. They can't find it out for them- our plans. But, after all, those whom I chiefly selves, and in most cases there is nobody to look to for aid, are what Mrs. Ellis calls the show them. So they sit moping and miserable; Daughters of England." either scattering their money in indiscriminate One daughter of England-type of many lazy charity". more-could not help regarding with mingled "Or living dependent on fathers and broth-compunction and respect, a certain matron of ers, with abundance of time, and little enough England, who, she knew, taught and reared of money." half-a-dozen children of her own, and yet man"And ignorant," pursued Mrs. Readyhand aged to find time for all these plans and doings smiling, "that the best beneficence is often not in behalf of other folks' children. And while money at all, but time. Plenty of people have thus talking, we passed through the heavymoney to spend; few have wit, judgment, and atmosphered dirty streets, with their evening practical experience enough to spend it prop- loungers collecting, and their evening shoperly." lamps beginning to flare; it was impossible not to think sadly of the great amount of ev. and misery to be battled with, and the comparative

"I understand. You want not merely seed, but sowers."

helplessness of even the strongest hand; of the "I will. That some wiser head and freer infinite deal to be done, and the few who can hand may put into practice all these things we by any possibility-without contravening the have been looking at and talking over. I have great just law, that charity begins at home-simply to relate facts, as they were brought unfind opportunities of doing it. der our notice."

"Still, my dear," said Mrs. Readyhand gent- "That is all. And who knows what good "there is a wise saying, 'Whatever thy might come of it?" said my friend smiling as hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' I we reached her door.

ly,

know how little you can by any possibility do in "Then, most certainly I will write my artithis way; but there is one thing you can do- cle."

you can write an article."

I have written it.

SLAVERY IN SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY.

[general serfship, but to have originated in comparatively modern acts of the Scottish Parlia

Mr. Hugh Miller, the eminent geologist, in ment, and in decisions of the Court of Session his very interesting and instructive work entitled-in acts of Parliament in which the poor ignoMy Schools and Schoolmasters; or the Story of rant subterranean men of the country were of my Education, alludes to the existence of slave-course wholly unrepresented, and in decisions ry in Scotland in the last century, which may of a court in which no agent of theirs ever not be generally known. Speaking of a collier made appearance in their behalf."-Pp. 303village in the vicinity of Niddry Mill, he ob- 305. Notes and Queries.

serves:

"Curious as the fact may seem, all the older men

of that village though situated little more than SIAMESE NOTION OF THE END OF THE WORLD.four miles from Edinburgh, had been born slaves."The Siamese say, that at the end of the world, Nay, eighteen years later (in 1842), when Par-seven eyes of the sun will be opened in heaven, liament issued a commission to inquire into the each successively will dry up something, till at nature and results of female labor in the coal the fifth the sea will be parched up, and by the pits of Scotland, there was a collier still living two last the whole earth will be set on fire and that had never been twenty miles from the Scot-consumed. Two eggs, however, male and fetish capital, who could state to the Commission-male, are to remain among the ashes, and from ers that both his father and grandfather had these shall all things be reproduced."-JOAM been slaves; that he himself had been born a DE BARROS. slave; and that he had wrought for years in a pit in the neighborhood of Musselburgh ere the colliers got their freedom." In a note he states that :

"The act for manumitting our Scotch colliers was passed in the year 1775, forty-nine years prior to the date of my acquaintance with the class at Niddry."

This act for various reasons had no practical effect, until they were set free by a second act passed in 1799.

LOVE OF COUNTRY.-The Biscayans and Catalonians are said to be the only Spaniards whose love of their country is not easily extinguished. Others who emigrate to America rarely wish to return. Such are the effects of freedom, and of the spirit which even the proud remembrance of freedom preserves.

"The language of both acts strikes with startling effect. 'Whereas,' says the preamble| ROSE TREES.-In Barnaby Googe it is said of the older act, that of 1775, by the statute of these, "It will also doe them good some time law of Scotland, as explained by the judges of to burne them." I have read that the rose did the courts of law there, many colliers, and coal- not blossom in Chili, where it is not indigebearers, and salters, are in a state of slavery or nous, until after it had accidentally been burnt bondage, bound to the colliers or saltworks down. Has this experiment ever been tried where they work for life, transferable with the with the queen of the garden ?—Notes and collieries and saltworks; and whereas the eman- Queries.

cipating, etc. A passage in the preamble of the act of 1799 is scarce less striking; it declares that, notwithstanding the former act, “FADE.”—Lamb objected to the word "fade'many colliers and coal-bearers still continue in less." "What," he asked, "is a fade?" He a state of bondage' in Scotland. The history of supposed that the termination -less could only our Scotch colliers would be found a curious and be adjected with propriety to a noun-substaninstructive one. Their slavery seems not to tive. But he did not recollect ceaseless, dauntave been derived from the ancient times of less, quenchless.-Notes and Queries.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE-No. 583.-28 JULY 1855.