r a general
hands-four-round of ten-pound householders, at the foot of the Obelisk in
St. George's-fields? Alas! romance can make no head against the riot
act; and pastoral simplicity is not understood by the police.

Well; many years ago we began to be a steady and matter-of-fact sort of
people, and dancing in spring being beneath our dignity, we gave it up,
and in course of time it descended to the sweeps--a fall certainly,
because, though sweeps are very good fellows in their way, and moreover
very useful in a civilised community, they are not exactly the sort of
people to give the tone to the little elegances of society. The sweeps,
however, got the dancing to themselves, and they kept it up, and handed
it down. This was a severe blow to the romance of spring-time, but, it
did not entirely destroy it, either; for a portion of it descended to the
sweeps with the dancing, and rendered them objects of great interest. A
mystery hung over the sweeps in those days. Legends were in existence of
wealthy gentlemen who had lost children, and who, after many years of
sorrow and suffering, had found them in the character of sweeps. Stories
were related of a young boy who, having been stolen from his parents in
his infancy, and devoted to the occupation of chimney-sweeping, was sent,
in the course of his professional career, to sweep the chimney of his
mother's bedroom; and how, being hot and tired when he came out of the
chimney, he got into the bed he had so often slept in as an infant, and
was discovered and recognised therein by his mother, who once every year
of her life, thereafter, requested the pleasure of the company of every
London sweep, at half-past one o'clock, to roast beef, plum-pudding,
porter, and sixpence.

Such stories as these, and there were many such, threw an air of mystery
round the sweeps, and produced for them some of those good effects which
animals derive from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. No one
(except the masters) thought of ill-treating a sweep, because no one knew
who he might be, or what nobleman's or gentleman's son he might turn out.
Chimney-sweeping was, by many believers in the marvellous, considered as
a sort of probationary term, at an earlier or later period of which,
divers young noblemen were to come into possession of their rank and
titles: and the profession was held by them in great respect accordingly.

We remember, in our young days, a little sweep about our