does the Pharisaic system act on such an occasion? It says to the operative, 'For you the sun shall shine, the breeze shall breathe, and the flowers shall blow in vain; you shall remain imbedded for ever, without hope or change, until your heart has had time tó fester and dissolve-until you retain nothing of humanity but its form.' Does any man deem this language too strong? Let him visit, as we have done, the wynds and closes of Glasgow on the Sunday morning-let him enter the dens and styes, which it would be an abuse of language to call dwellings-and temperate indeed must he be if indignation at a system which confines thousands of human beings to those catacombs of living death, on the only day when a chance of temporary deliverance is opened, does not lead him to vent his feelings in stronger terms. Christianity and its ordinances, to use the sublime language of the prophet, were sent to 'bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison-door to them that are bound.'-No,' says the Pharisaic system; one of its ordinances, at least, shall be applied to drive the wound deeper into the heart, to add fresh chains to the captive, and to place firmer barriers against his prison.' This, moreover, is done with the professed design of improving his morality, when it is notorious that, from the prohibition of locomotion, the closing of every place where innocent recreation can be obtained, and the enforced idleness of all classes, profligacy must be the inevitable result of the system.

Two places are open to the operative, the kirk and the whiskeyshop. There are many things to prevent his frequenting the former -the expense of pew-rents, the want of decent clothes; or the less innocent, though not absolutely guilty causes, dislike of the minister or the elders. On the other hand, admission to the whiskey-shop is cheap; little regard is paid to dress; indeed, amid the dense smoke of the back parlour, it would be often difficult to discover what kind of dress any visitant wore; and the landlord is all subservience and compliance. That the Sunday is thus spent in brutal smoking and drinking by the majority of the lower orders in Glasgow, no one acquainted with the city will venture to deny. The vice, indeed, is silent and solitary; but on that very account it is the more perilous. It separates the operative from his wife and children-it hardens his heart against them. The expanding influence of the Book of Nature, which assuredly is not less the work of God than the book of Reve. lation, is closed equally against the father and the husband, the child and the wife; its lessons of love are hidden from their eyes, and lessons of hate are inculcated by the darkening process. This is repeated week after week, and year after year; nay, its effects are known and felt by the most vociferous echoers of the cuckoo cry, 'Behold the beautiful solemnity of a Scottish Sabbath!'

Before concluding this paper, in which we have had often to tread on perilous ground, it may be permitted us to deprecate giving offence to any individual sect or party. We have set down naught in malice.' On the contrary, feeling grateful for much kindness received in Glasgow, delighted with its natural and artificial beauties. and interested in its continued prosperity, we have endeavoured to perform the useful, but not always acceptable, service of pointing out the flaws and defects in its social machinery, which may not only impede its progress, but produce some perilous fracture as it moves forward in its present rapid and, we trust, prosperous career.

THE WASHER WOMAN.

BY HAL. WILLIS, STUDENT AT LAW.

THE pine-apple, the most delicious and rarest of fruits that grace the dessert, the fragrant melon, and the cool cucumber, are alike the delicate produce of a dunghill!

The stiff-starched, smart, and spotless frill, the snowy ducks, and trim shirt-collar derive their dazzling and cleanly beauty from the dexterous and spongy hands of the tea-quaffing and Geneva-bibbing washerwoman!

Let no man, then, and especially the refined exquisite, who delights to adorn his sweet person in all the luxury of clean linen, despise the presiding priestess of the washing-tub. Draggle-tailed drab as she may appear to his refined vision, it is to the exercise of her saponaceous ablutions that he owes the major part of his attractions. For his sake she patiently dooms herself, with the resignation of a martyr, to be continually in the suds,'-and in hot water.' The vocation is of so ancient a date, that the commencement of her toilsome art is lost in the vanishing point of time, extending far, far beyond the memory of man! The earliest mention extant we believe to be in that exquisite classic poem, commencing with the euphoneous line,

'Sing a song for sixpence,'

in the third verse of which we find it particularly mentioned, that The maid was in the garden

A hanging out the clothes;'

and we have no hesitation in asserting in the teeth of all commentators, past, present, and to come, that the 'maid' therein mentioned was none other than the King's washerwoman; for although now-adays the majority of washerwomen is composed of wives and widows, yet there is no tenable objection why a maid should not be of the fraternity, or rather the sorority, or sisterhood!

In this age, however, the class usually consists of women of fiveand-twenty to fifty.

Frequently dining with 'Duke Humphrey' from necessity, they are unacquainted with his namesake, Sir Humphrey Davy; yet are they undeniably practical chemists,-well knowing that soda and potash are not to be indiscriminately used, and are thoroughly initiated in the knowledge of the various aqueous solutions and compounds, suited to the garments to be submitted to their cleansing operations.

6

The sorting' of the clothes into white and coloured portions is their primary care; for even the colours that are warranted' will 'run,' if not washed with the greatest circumspection. While they know from experience that linen and stockings may be 'biled,' they are aware that flannels, if put in the copper, will's'rink up to nothin,' and be 'spiled.'

So delicate, too, is their vision, that they pretend to discover 'colour'—even in white garments; for nothing is more common than

to hear them exclaim, that the white "things" is a werry bad colour.' Although they know this may arise from their own negligent handling, they generally attribute it to the age of the article.

In London and its vicinity, the washing' forms a considerable item in the domestic expenses, especially when given out' to those laundresses who profess 'to do' for gentlemen and families. The economical housewife, therefore, is compelled to hire a woman by the day, to get up the things' at home, to the woeful annoy. ance of all the males in the establishment, who nauseate, with a sort of hydrophobic feeling, the steamy odours sent forth by coppers, washing-tubs, and drying linen. A six-weeks' wash is in truth an awful visitation!

Happy, thrice happy are those who are able to escape the chilling horrors of a horse full of wet clothes steaming before a roasting kitchen-range-or, when they open their eyes and their bed-room windows on a summer's morning, behold their trim garden' eclipsed by transverse lines, extending from pole to pole,' with a formidable array of bleaching linens pegged' thereon, and fluttering in the breeze!

Such a sight is enough to make a man cut himself in shaving, although priding himself in the possession of the best-tempered razor, and the steadiest hand in the world!

Adab-wash' is bad enough of all conscience; but a regular sixweeks' one is enough to send a man clean out of his seven senses, and make him exclaim in an ecstasy,

'Oh! the good old days of Adam and Eve!'

-turn his milk of human kindness to-curds and whey.-and make his whole composition as 'mothery'-as a jar of uncovered preserves!

Washerwomen and chimney-sweepers are the earliest disturbers of domestic repose. It almost infallibly happens, however, that the serving lassie is never stirring when the poor little sweep applies his sooty fingers to the noisy knocker, and the bass accompaniment of the dull single knock, to his shrill and prolonged cry of Swee ee ep!' generally arouses the inmates of the house and the neighbours, before the sleepy and slip-shod girl shuffles down the creaking stairs to let in the shivering child, who is only too punctual in his appoint

ment.

The washerwoman, however, is usually more fortunate; for she is a much more welcome visitor to the kitchen; and, notwithstanding the place is cluttered up' with heaps of clothes and wash-tubs, a blazing fire gives a cheerful glow to the busy region, while a bright copper tea kettle singing on the hob greets her with its refreshing harmony, and a pleasing anticipation of a 'dish of tea, preparatory to commencing operations.

The washerwoman par excellence is generally a sort of round bundle of a figure, habited in a cotton dress, with short sleeves, provided with a capacious pair of pockets, for the reception and concealment of candle-ends, bits of soap, or broken victuals, just as chance, opportunity, or the generosity of the maid may determine. A mob cap, with a very full border, conceals her tresses when in the

suds; and an apron or two protects her dress from the accidental sprinklings of the wash-tub.

The effects of her steamy occupation give to her physiognomy a par-boiled complexion, relieved occasionally by a rosy hue, which partially tinges her nasal promontory, consequent on certain libations of Geneva, or other strong waters. The elbows of her brawny arms are red, her hands unnaturally white and spongy, arising from the continual immersion in hot water, to which her arduous vocation subjects them. The tongue is peculiarly well-hung, and appears indefatigable. She soaps, and rubs, and souses, and rattles on with unabated energy, apparently thinking with the immortal bard of

Avon that

'Silence is alone commendable

In a neat's tongue or maid not vendable.'

She is the peripatetic chronicle of domestic intelligence,-the 'snapper up of unconsidered trifles,' which she ingeniously works up with farther particulars, on dits, and rumours, drawing her inferences and conclusions to suit the taste of her hearers, with all the tact and onesided policy of one experienced in the concoction of 'impartial news.' She is a perfect register of births, deaths, and marriages for the district in which she moves and washes; and, generally speaking, her narrations are about as faithful and veracious as those embellished romances given to the world under the title of histories.

The confidant and adviser of the maids-of-all-work, she is looked upon by them in the light of a prime-minister; for, like that great functionary, she has always some snug place in her gift, or, as she phrases it, in her eye,' which, although it may prove no sinecure, is still desirable. Her recommendation, however, is by no means disinterested; for through these humble agents she politically expects to gain a footing in the family, and to come in for the 'loaves and fishes,' in the humble shape of the fragmentary portions of the hospitable board, indeed, 'wheels within wheels,'-form the intricate machinery of her truly political system, selfishness being the main-spring which sets the whole in motion.

Between four and five o'clock on one of those thick and saffrontinted foggy mornings, in the suicidal month of November, the melancholy mugginess of which was only partially refreshed by a gentle drizzling rain, an old woman, in a huge wrapping-cloak, and a tattered black chip bonnet, tied over her ears with a dingy-coloured cotton handkerchief, was cautiously picking her way through the streets, to the clink-clanking accompaniment of a pair of pattens, bearing in her hand a horn lantern of most formidable dimensions. This precaution at the period of our veracious record was indisputably necessary; for those modern illuminati, the gas companies, had not then put forth their claims to the applause of an 'enlightened British public,' and the parish-lamps, whose feeble rays were scarcely sufficient to render 'darkness visible,' were blinking and flickering, and vainly endeavouring to shoot their friendly rays through the globular glasses which surrounded them, like a very little intelligence in a very thick head!

For our own part, although we abhor all innovation, yet do we rejoice in real improvement, and certainly do not repine that

'The light of other days'

hath departed. The sharp and monotonous clink-clank' of the said pattens was alone interrupted by the drowsy tone of the watchman calling the hour. Swinging his lantern in his hand, which was very much like a younger branch of the same family as the old woman's

Half-past fo-ur a-clock-and a fog-gy morning!' bawled the ancient guardian of the night. Half-past

'Watchman,' said the old woman, cutting short his useless information, pray, vich ind o' this here street is number siventy-six ?' T'other.'

is!'

Thank'ee,' replied the old woman. Mussy! vot a mornin' it

'Mother Naggs?-It is, I do declare,' said the watchman, holding up his lantern to her shrouded visage. Vell, that's cur'us. I knowed ye by y'ur woice.'

'Vot, Davis !-vell, that's funny, now-who'd ha' thought it!' exclaimed the washerwoman, in her turn elevating her dim luminary. 'Vell, and how's Mother Davis and the little uns?' And, without waiting for a reply to her kind inquiry, continued, 'Do you happen to know them people, the Dickens's, at siventy-six. Are they well to do, and all that?-for this 'ere's the fust time as I've bin engaged to do for 'em.'

'Seventy-six?' repeated the watchman. 'Yes-Oh, yes! Them's werry respectable hinhabitants-leastways they al'ays tips half-acrown at Christmas time vich ve reckon raythur hansom as things go, Missis Naggs.'

Hereupon Missis Naggs sagely remarked that times was sadly changed; and then her old acquaintance politely volunteered to see her to the door, leaving half his round 'unfinished; and they had. such a gossip'-enjoying their chat in spite of the weather.

The door of number seventy-six is reached, and the 'rappant appendage to the ligneous barricade' modestly applied in a single knock.

A 'good mornin' between the washerwoman and the watchman is exchanged, and she is let in.'

'Dear me, vot a miseraible mornin'!' says the sympathising maidof-all work. For goodness' sake come in, and warm yourself.'

Blowing out her end of candle, and delicately pinching out the red snuff with those primitive snuffers and extinguishers, her fingers, the old woman proceeds to take off her things,' while the maid rams the huge kitchen poker into the blazing fire, to expedite the boiling of the kettle.

A glance round the room is sufficient to satisfy the experienced eye of the washerwoman that she has got into good quarters. The tea-tackle is already displayed, and some thick rounds of buttered toast are 'frizzling' on the hob.

'You've a comfortable place here, my dear. There doesn't seem no want o' nothin' neither,' observes Mrs. Naggs.

'You're right, marm. It's the most liberallest family-plenty to eat and drink and thof I've enough to do, of all conscience, seeing there's only myself, I've no cause to complain.'