s by break of
day from Hammersmith to Covent Garden's famed piazzas--the delight,
and, oh I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him
shouldest thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the
grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee
but three half-pennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an
added halfpenny)--so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er-charged
secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter
volume to the welkin--so may the descending soot never taint thy
costly well-ingredienced soups--nor the odious cry, quick-reaching
from street to street, of the _fired chimney_, invite the rattling
engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual
scintillation thy peace and pocket!

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers and
taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over the
casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure
the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than
forgiveness.--In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with
my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and
shame enough--yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had
happened--when the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered
me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob,
and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the
tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked
themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a
previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with
such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth----but Hogarth
has got him already (how could he miss him?) in the March to Finchley,
grinning at the pie-man----there he stood, as he stands in the
picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever--with such a
maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth--for the grin
of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it--that I could have
been content, if the honour of a gentleman might endure it, to have
remained his butt and his mockery till midnight.

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a fine
set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a
casket, presumably holding such jewels; but, methinks