and thinking he had found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle on the fire, and said the commandment meant that he must never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel running about the room holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming 'Oh dear, oh dear, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!'" We are happy in having it in our power to give extended circulation to the passage which follows the author's apology for his good story of Manuel de Vergara. 'Of what use a story may be, even in the most serious debates, may be seen from the circulation of old Joes in Parliament, which are as current there as their sterling namesakes used to be in the city some threescore years ago. A jest, though it should be as stale as last week's newspaper, and as flat as Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter by the collective wisdom of the nation: nay, it is sometimes thrown out like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion to draw off hounds from the scent. 'The Bill which should have put an end to the inhuman practice of employing children to sweep chimneys was thrown out on the third reading, in the House of Lords, (having passed the Commons without a dissentient voice,) by a speech from Lord Lauderdale, the force of which consisted in, literally, a Joe Miller jest. He related that an Irishman used to sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was fastened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose after it. A neighbour, to whom he recommended this as a convenient mode, objected to it upon the score of cruelty to the goose, upon which he replied, that a couple of ducks might do as well. Now, if the bill before the house had been to enact that men should no longer sweep chimneys, but that boys should be used instead, the story would have been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it related to chimney-sweeping: but it was a joke, and that sufficed. The lords laughed his lordship had the satisfaction of throwing out the bill, and the home negro trade has continued from that time, now seven years, till this day, and still continues. His lordship had his jest, and it is speaking within compass to say, that in the course of those seven years two thousand children have been sacrificed in consequence. 'The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor admit of a better defence before God and man. Had his lordship perused the evidence which had been laid before the House of Commons when the bill was brought in, upon which evidence the bill was founded? Was he aware of the shocking barbarities connected with the trade, and inseparable from it? Did he know that children inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a childhood, during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute destitute of every kind of comfort, have, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, to seek their living how they can in some other employment, for it is only by children that this can be carried on? Did his lordship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused? that their sufferings begin at the six--sometimes a year earlier? finally, that they are sold to this worst and most inhuman of all slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the of being sold to it? age of purpose I bear no ill-will towards Lord Lauderdale, either personally or politically far from it. His manly and honourable conduct on the Queen's trial, when there was such an utter destitution of honour in many quarters where it was believed to exist, and so fearful a want of manliness where it ought to have been found, entitles him to the respect and gratitude of every true Briton. But I will tell his lordship that rather than have spoken as he did against an act which would have lessened the sum of wickedness and suffering in this country, rather than have treated a question of pure humanity with contempt and ridicule,—rather than have employed my tongue for such a purpose, and with such success, I would- -But no: I will not tell him how I had concluded. I will not tell what I had added in the sincerity of a free tongue and an honest heart. I leave the sentence imperfect rather than that any irritation, which the strength of my language might excite, should lessen the salutary effects of self-condemnation.'-pp. 159-163. We hope Lord Lauderdale will seriously consider this affecting admonition; and we can assure him that if he were to confess in his place in parliament, that he spoke rashly on the occasion here alluded to, and be himself the man to bring in a new bill in the room of that which his merriment was the unhappy means of throwing out he would entitle himself to a deeper and a more general sense of grateful respect than has lately rewarded any part of the public conduct of any of our statesmen, with the exceptions of Mr. Sadler and Lord Ashley, in their generous exertions for the factory children. But let us return to the Doves A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in some ailment of the stomach. Your true lover of literature is never fastidious. I do not mean the helluo librorum, the swinish feeder, who thinks that every name which is to be found in a title-page, or on a tomb-stone, ought to be rescued from oblivion; nor those first cousins of the moth, who labour under a bulimy for black-letter, and believe everything to be excellent which was written in the reign of Elizabeth. I mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, who gathers the harvest of literature into his barns, threshes the straw, winnows the grain, grinds it at his own mill, bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the true bread of knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage-leaf, and eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault with him for his taste-not I! 'The Doves, father as well as son, were blest with a hearty intellectual G 2 lectual appetite, and a strong digestion: but the son had the more catholic taste. He would have relished caviare; would have ventured upon laver undeterred by its appearance-and would have liked it. 'He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, Sally Lunns at Bath, Sweet Butter in Cumberland, Orange Marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon Haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with Beefsteaks to oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with a déjeuner à l'Anglaise. 6 He would have eaten squab-pye in Devonshire, and the pye which is squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's head with the hair on in Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland; frogs with the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sour-krout with the Germans, maccaroni with the Italians, aniseed with the Spaniards, garlic with any body; horse-flesh with the Tartars; ass-flesh with the Persians; dogs with the North Western American Indians; curry with the Asiatic East Indians; birds' nests with the Chinese ; mutton roasted with honey with the Turks; pismire cakes on the Orinoco; and turtle and venison with the Lord Mayor; and the turtle and venison he would have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though catholic, was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted all, thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon either, but he would have liked best that which was best. And his intellectual appetite had the same happy catholicism. 'He would not have said with Euphues, "If I be in Crete, I can lie; if in Greece, I can shift; if in Italy, I can court:" but he might have said with him, “I can carouse with Alexander; abstain with Romulus; eat with the Epicure; fast with the Stoic; sleep with Endymion; watch with Chrysippus."-vol. i. pp. 172-175. We must now indulge ourselves with a long but not longsome extract from the chapter which our learned author does not disdain to bestow on the puppet-shows that stimulated and satisfied the juvenile imagination of his hero. He begins it with some general reflections, so just, and so gracefully expressed, that we cannot omit them. 'Were it not for that happy facility with which the mind in such cases commonly satisfies itself, my readers would not find it more easy to place themselves in imagination at Ingleton, a hundred years ago, than at Thebes or Athens,-so strange must it appear to them that a family should have existed in humble but easy circumstances, among whose articles of consumption neither tea nor sugar had a place, who never raised potatoes in their garden nor saw them at their table, and who never wore a cotton garment of any kind. Equally unlike anything to which my contemporaries have been accustomed, must it be for them to hear of an Englishman whose talk was of philosophy, moral or speculative, not of politics; who read books in folio, and had never seen a newspaper, nor ever heard of a magazine, review, or literary journal of any kind. Not less strange must it seem to them, who, if they please, may travel by steam at the rate rate of thirty miles an hour upon the Liverpool and Manchester railway, or at ten miles an hour by stage upon any of the more frequented roads, to consider the little intercourse which in those days was carried on between one part of the kingdom and another. During young Daniel's boyhood, and for many years after he had reached the age of manhood, the whole carriage of the northern counties, and, indeed, of all the remoter parts, was performed by pack-horses, the very name of which would long since have been as obsolete as their use, if it had not been preserved by the sign or appellation of some of those inns at which they were accustomed to put up. Rarely, indeed, were the roads about Ingleton marked by any other wheels than those of its indigenous carts. That little town, however, obtained considerable celebrity in those days, as being the home and head-quarters of Rowland Dixon, the Gesticulator Maximus, or puppet-show-master-general of the north; a person, not less eminent in his line than Powel whom the Spectator has immortalized. My readers must not form their notion of Rowland Dixon's company, from the ambulatory puppet-shows which of late years have added new sights and sounds to the spectacles and cries of London. Far be it from me to depreciate those peripatetic street exhibitions, which you may have before your window at a call, and by which the hearts of so many children are continually delighted: nay, I confess, that few things in that great city carry so much comfort to the cockles of my own, as the well-known voice of Punch. The same which in my schoolboy days I listened to, as Wordsworth says of the Cuckoo, ' And I can listen to it yet— That golden time again.' It is a voice that seems to be as much in accord with the noise of towns, and the riotry of fairs, as the note of the cuckoo with the joyousness of spring fields and the fresh verdure of the vernal woods. But Rowland Dixon's company of puppets would be pitifully disparaged, if their size, uses, or importance, were to be estimated by the street performances of the present day. 'The dramatis personæ of these modern exhibitions never I believe comprehends more than four characters, and these four are generally the same, to wit, Punch, Judy, as she who used to be called Joan is now denominated, the Devil, and the Doctor, or sometimes the Constable in the Doctor's stead. There is, therefore, as little variety in the action as in the personages. And their dimensions are such, that the whole company and the theatre in which they are exhibited are carried along the streets at quick time, and with a light step, by the two persons who manage the concern.'-(By the way, has the author ever seen Mr. George Cruikshank's etchings of Punch and Judy? If not, he is obliged to us for thus suggesting to his attention a work of great great felicity in design, and inimitable lightness in execution.)But the Rowlandian, Dixonian, or Ingletonian puppets were large as life; and required for their removal a caravan, (in the use to which that word is now appropriated,) a vehicle of such magnitude and questionable shape, that if Don Quixote had encountered its like upon the highway, he would have regarded it as the most formidable adventure which had ever been presented to his valour. And they went as far beyond our street-puppets in the sphere of their subjects as they exceeded them in size; for in that sphere quicquid agunt homines was included,—and a great deal more. In no country, and in no stage of society, has the drama ever existed in a ruder state than that in which this company presented it. The Drolls of Bartholomew fair were hardly so far below the legitimate drama, as they were above that of Rowland Dixon; for the Drolls were written compositions: much ribaldry might be, and no doubt was, interpolated as opportunity allowed or invited; but the main dialogue was prepared. Here, on the contrary, there was no other preparation than that of frequent practice. The stock pieces were founded upon popular stories or ballads-such as Fair Rosamond -Jane Shore-and Bateman who hanged himself for love; with Scriptural subjects for Easter and Whitsun-week, such as the Creation, the Deluge, Susannah and the Elders, and Nebuchadnezzar or the Fall of Pride. These had been handed down from the time of the old mysteries and miracle-plays, having, in the progress of time and change, descended from the monks and clergy, to become the property of such managers as Powel and Rowland Dixon. In what manner they were represented when thus Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from their high estate, may be imagined from a play-bill of Queen Anne's reign, in which one of them is thus advertised: "At Crawley's Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived; with the addition of Noah's flood. Also, several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene does present Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon trees. Likewise over the ark is seen the Sun rising in a most glorious manner. Moreover, a multitude of Angels will be seen in a double rank, which presents a double prospect, one for the Sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen six Angels ringing of bells. Likewise, machines descend from above, double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell, and Lazarus seen in Abraham's bosom; besides several figures dancing jigs, sarabands and country dances, to the admiration of the spectators; with the merry conceits of Squire Punch and Sir John Spendall.” 'I have not found it anywhere stated at what time these irreverent representations were discontinued in England, nor whether (which is not |