her clean apron, and drowsily puffed, and gazed into the grate, as the coals began to glow beneath the music of her bellows. It was not an occasional friend, but it was ever a constant companion to the fender on which Susan rested her worsted-stockinged feet. What innovations have driven out the bellows? In those days there was a bundle of green sticks called a kindler, which no power but that of the bellows could make burn. There were no boilers then which yield warm water without any trouble. Everything, too, in the days of the bellows, was to be forced to the boiling point in the rude cookery. The notion of cookery excluded any of those foreign devices which required a slow heat. But very few higher things were then left to nature. No process could be perfect without perpetual interference with ordinary physical powers. There was no "laissez faire" in the cabinet; and why in the kitchen? The bellows was an emblem of the State, that was always making a great noise to stimulate society to the white heat of prosperity. But the State, like the bellows, sometimes put out the fire; and the fire always burnt dully after the stimulus.

Item: the Sand-box.

Did Goldsmith see "the nicely sanded floor" in England? At the end of the seventeenth century it was not common in the midland counties. Henry Teonge, who came from Warwickshire, thus writes in his Diary, about Deal: "The other thing which was strange to me was, that in all places else

wherever I yet was, the chiefest care of the neat housewife was to keep the rooms clean from all manner of dust, by sweeping, washing, and rubbing them. But here, clean contrary; for having first swept them clean, they then strew them all over with sand, yea, their very best chambers."* I never saw the sanded floor in our "best chambers," -for then the carpet luxury had crept in. But the delight of the presiding goddess of the kitchen in her sanded paradise! When the sand first was strewed it was not very agreeable-for the sandman, who duly travelled with his cart from house to house, sometimes delivered it rather wet. But it was strewed-and the bellows-quickened fire soon dried it. Day by day it was sifted, when the cooking toils were over. And then, what lady's bower could be so perfect! The shutters were closed; the twinkling candle was lighted; the pewter and the brass glistened; the cat purred; the threadpaper was brought out; and the tidy lass in the stuffed gown, who thought her wages of six pounds "riches priceless," was as happy--I hope she was happier than the modern "professed cook," who stipulates for twenty five pounds a-year and a kitchen-maid, and puts on her silk gown when the dessert is gone in.

I think there was not much reading in that "nicely sanded" kitchen, although books were accessible. The honest occupant had her own favourite books-but they were few, and not costly. I should like now to have a complete collection of * Diary of Henry Teonge, p. 10.

such as I remember to have seen ;-for Time, which has made them obsolete, has given them a factitious value. They were what we term 'Chap-Books.' Susan had a considerable collection of them in her box. There was 'The History of Valentine and Orson; The Seven Champions of Christendom;' -and 'The History of the London 'Prentice.' That London 'Prentice, who was called "Aurelius," went to Turkey, destroyed two lions that were prepared to devour him, and married the Emperor's daughter. I see him now, as he is represented in the surprising wood-cut, thrusting his hand down one lion's throat, while the other is howling on his back. "The History of the Lancashire Witches' was there -real witches who rode on winds; and there, too, 'The History of Mother Shipton.' 'Jack the Giant-Killer' was undoubtedly in Susan's collection, and so 'Fortunatus.' But the book on which my early friend most pored was the Fortune Book,' which told young men and maids their fortune by drawing cards, and also the signification of moles, and the interpretation of dreams. They are gone -all.

My native town had a very considerable collection of Alms-houses. I was fond of talking to some of the old women who dwelt in them; for they were cleanly and gossiping crones-upon the whole contented with their lot. One of them had a wonderful cat, which had outlived all other cats, having been preserved by the kindness of a predecessor, who had also an equally kind predecessor. The cat was endowed by an old maid with a shilling a-week,

and there was a corporate trustee. Pope's line was no mere imagination

"Die, and endow a college or a cat.".

To take care of this cat with nine lives was pleasant occupation. But the greater part of the Almswomen were employed at the Spinning-wheel. There was a spinning charity in the borough,-a bequest in times before Arkwright; and it was the duty of an officer of the corporation to buy flax, and give out flax to be spun, and pay the spinners week by week, and have the flax woven into sheets, which were distributed to poor people according to their deserts. What records of changes are our old charities! How many obsolete bequests to companies and corporations, which time has put aside; and which have, in our enlightened metropolis at least, resolved themselves into the husks of "Epicurus' sty!" I suppose my old Spinners are gone.

If the Spinning-wheel remains, under the protection of "vested interests," the Hour Glass, by which the old spinner used to measure out her little day, is gone. Time has broken his own. emblem. But the moral of the pretty antique hour-meter remains, in spite of electric telegraphs. One generation succeeds another. Dynasties perish. Manners change. Be the glass turned once in an hour, or once in a century, the sand is always running out, and always heaping up. To-day is the child of yesterday.

THE FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD.

In the early Spring of 1812, I stepped for a month or two out of the little world in which I had been living, to come face to face with great public things. I had a friend who was the editor of two daily newspapers, a morning and an evening. What a wonderful man I thought him! I see him now, as I often saw him, sitting in his back office, in a dingy dressing-gown and unshorn beard, dashing off his leader for the evening paper. At two o'clock he dressed, and he kindly took the youth from the country with him for a walk through the Strand, and along the mall in the Park. The Park was a queer unfashioned place then, with a long dirty pond where Charles II. fed his ducks-no plantations no gravelled walks-no gas lights. But we walked happily enough; and my kind friend told funny Irish stories, and notable anecdotes of Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Ponsonby, with whom he boasted an intimacy. Yet, of the real life about him he knew very little, although he was the Editor of two daily papers. To edit a paper then was not very difficult. Many of the thousand complicated social and commercial questions, that have grown up during our long Peace, were then scarcely known. Parliamentary Reform was con