this poor babe was thin, unnourishing. The return to its little baby tricks and efforts to engage attention, bitter, ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses; it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present suffering and awakens the passion of young wonder.

"It was never sung to; no one ever told to it a tale of nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die, as it happened. It had It broke at once into no young dreams. the iron realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor, as any object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the co operator, for the food with the parent. It is never his mirth,

his diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times.

"The children of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the casual street talk between a poor woman and her little girl; a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age), of the promised sight or play, of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clearstarching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say that the home of the very poor is no home?"

So true is it, that "man thinks of the few,

God of the many." In the midst of a world which has been blighted by oppression, it would be gloomy to live, if we could not spend our lives in making it better.

I have the honour, sir, to be,

Your obedient servant,

C. EDWARDS LESTER.

DEAR

,

Chelmsford, -;

1840.

YESTERDAY I came to this place, which is thirty miles north east of London, chiefly to see John Thorogood, who is a victim to the exactions of the Established Church. I have spent several hours with him in the Chelmsford Jail ; and I have seen no man for a long time, for whom I feel more sympathy and admiration. I found my way to the jail, and asked permission to see Mr. Thorogood. The keeper reluctantly turned the key and unbarred the door.

"Yes, sir," said he, "you must come in, I suppose, but I wish the authorities would take this Thorogood away; for, every few minutes, day after day, and month after month, some one comes to the door, 'Can I see John Thorogood, sir?'

VOL. I.

'Can I see Mr. Tho

rogood, sir?' 'I have come to see this famous Thorogood;' so that I have got sick of his very name. Why, if you were to stay here one week, you would think there was nobody in all England worth seeing but John. But I don't complain of him or his wife-that's all well enough; still I don't want to be bothered with John any longer."

The jailer led me to Mr. Thorogood's apartment, and I introduced myself. He seemed to be about thirty-five or forty years old, with a stout and well-made person. His countenance wears a kind but resolute expression, and his forehead denotes a considerable degree of intellect. He is a mechanic, and has always moved in the common walks of society; but he is a man of extraordinary intelligence and great firmness of character. I told him that I had come to Chelmsford to see him; that I considered him a persecuted man, and wished to know something of his history.

"Yes, sir," said he, "I am a persecuted man, and I thank you for coming to see me.