to view in the workhouse, and they took much
pains to convince me that it was their misfortune, not their fault or
their wish. Two fine children, one of them a chubby happy creature,
playing on the floor, added to the groupe an interest that was deeply
affecting. Doubtless, thought I, these simple people once entertained
many projects of humble ambition, which, if explained, might draw a
smile from the great--but here, alas! they seem to be entombed for
ever!

I now took a cursory view of the women's yard, in which I found the
same appearances of cleanliness and comfort as on the men's side. But
the most interesting scene was the nursery, where sixteen little
cherubs, the oldest about five years, were engaged in their innocent
diversions, regardless whether they were in a workhouse or a palace,
and unsuspicious of the ills that await them in a world governed by
selfishness, where the greatest of all crimes, and the forerunner of
all calamities, is poverty! I was pleased to find that the mother of
three of them was allowed to fill the office of nurse, and the tears
trickled down the poor woman's face, as I particularly admired one
fine boy, who, it happened, was her child. "Ah! Sir, (said she,) he's
so like his poor father!--my poor husband little thought, when he
died, that his dear children would so soon be in a workhouse"--here
her tears and loud sobs stopt her utterance; but, recovering
herself--"if I can't maintain 'em with the labour of my hands, (said
she,) I will do what I can for 'em here; there is no other happiness
for me in this world, and I will continue to do for them till God
shall please to take me also." A woman's and mother's tears are so
contagious, and the scene before me formed so deep a drama of real
life, that I hurried from the room!

The good matron now showed her cleanly kitchen, her well-arranged
laundry, pantry, bakehouse, &c. &c., with which my feelings were not
at that moment in unison; I saw, however, much to admire and nothing
to condemn. On inquiry, I found that these excellent regulations were
the effect of a late revolution in the establishment. Till a very
recent period, it had been the criminal practice of the overseers, and
the negligent sufferance of the parish, to #FARM# or #LET OUT# the
poor to some grim tyrant or task-master, at the average rate of 5_s._
6_d._ per head! This man was to provide for these wretched victims of
the public neglect, and of his miscalculation, out of