promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in his top-knot, and had bought him a commission. Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable. Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocritical, and 5 insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator; and the dramatis persona were supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were thus IO marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially, where the abso15 lute sense of reality (so indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe in such characters as Surface the villain of artificial comedy even while you read or see them. If you did, they would shock and not divert you. When 20 Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his father Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw thee. Ben. Ey, ey, been! Been far enough, an that be all. Well, father, 25 and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val? Sir Sampson. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 30 Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you say-Well, and how? I have a many questions to ask you — Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have co-existed with the warm-hearted temperament of the character. But when you read it in the spirit with which such playful selections and specious combinations rather than strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, or when you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the moral sense at all. For what is Ben -the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us but a piece of satirea creation of Congreve's fancy—a dreamy combination of all the accidents of a sailor's character 5 his contempt of money - with his credulity to women that necessary estrangement from home which it is just within the verge of credibility to suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But 10 when an actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom the creature dear to half-belief- which Bannister exhibited - displays before our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar-and nothing else when instead of investing it with a delicious confused- 15 ness of the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose he gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its actions; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone we feel 20 the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed; a real man has got in among the dramatis personæ, and puts them out. We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place is not behind the curtain but in the first or second gallery. XVIII. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS I LIKE to meet à sweep - understand me - not a grown 25 sweeper- old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive -but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the 30 peep peep of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aërial ascents not seldom anticipating the sun-rise? I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks - poor 5 blots - innocent blacknesses I reverence these young Africans of our own growth these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience 10 to mankind. When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation! to see a chit no bigger than one's self enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni- to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding 15 on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades! - to shudder with the idea that "now, surely, he must be lost for ever!"—to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight and then (O fulness of delight) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon 20 emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told, that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly; not much unlike the old 25 stage direction in Macbeth, where the "Apparition of child crowned with a tree in his hand rises." Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the 30 proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he 5 avers in London) for the vending of this "wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street - the only Salopian house, I have never yet adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients—a cautious premonition to the 10 olfactories constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with avidity. - I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it 15 happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 20 mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive - but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper 25 can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense, if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals — cats - when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something 30 more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the only Salopian house; yet be it known to thee, reader if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art happily ignorant of the fact he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers, at the dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home 5 from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen10 fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. The rake who wisheth to dissipate his o'er night vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 15 This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages 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 20 encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter 25 volume to the welkin so may the descending soot never taint 30 thy costly well-ingredienced soups—nor the odious cry, quickreaching 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, |