First View Of London

When I got up afler the fust night's sleep in "Ould England" No Street square, I got out of a bed which had jeen all night rocking in memory of the sea, and carne down to the front street door and leaned against the side resolved to :see Londox." For I had read, 'Whiltington and Ms Cat," "London Cries," and other profound works on the great metropolis, and longed to verify with these eyes, the origináis of those graphic and most philosophical histories. Well, the first thing I saw was a man n second hand fustian, fresh from Monmouth street clothing shops, of middling stature, lean and bent somevhat, pushing alonga wheel-barrow full of rotten-stone or pumice-stone, in square chunks, neat and white, tor scouringdoor stones, kitchen-tools et cetera; and he bawleü as he went along, peering ever through the iron enees at the basement doors, to see if they would buy his wares. But what he scid . could nol make out then nor since. - You will have no difficulty in identifying the craft, however, for they are the first stirring in thestreets, that is as early ns seven or eight o'clock; all honest people abed till that time, and a little scouring jeing proper and requisito before breakfast, which is taken, by the above said zonest people, from niño to eleven o'clock, according tothe quantity and quality of their drink the night before. And, jy the way, I should advise you tago out, one morning at least, even at the risk of 3eing thought a "villain," which you know, in classic English means a laborer, before the pumice-stone barrows are creaking; if for nothing but the queer sensation you will experience, goinglong the streets of a city of two millions of people as light as day and yet as still as night! Yes, and a great deal stiller than London nigbts. For except the "chirp-chee-irp che-chirp oí the perpetual sparrows, peeping out of every hole in the bricks and roofs, about as big as our little grey meado w-spa rrow, and the same kind of a bird, only of a dirty brown color, (which the young ones cotch in hatching from the general aspect of London) and a much bolder and less modest bird; I say, except the chirping of these sparrows, I have walked London streets by sun-light, and not n sound heard - a wheel rattling - nor a human being, not even a beggar in sight. Now whilo I stood leaning against the door-side, and the pumice-stone had passed, and two or three girls had come up out of as many kitchen.doors and bought what they liked; I beheld a boy of apparently ten years for a but, being English, probablv sixteen, sittingon the extreme rump of one of the smallest Jackasses you ever saw, and driving five more, of equal si'ze, before him, all upon asharp canter, as a hen travels which has the use of but one leg, while sho wishes to get out of the society of a boy or dog pursuing. These asaes which were females being driven ío pasture, by saij boy, upon the hindmost, without sa'ddle, pillion or blanket, whípping up with a short cudgel, and crying 'he'-'he'-'hilk,' are kept, so for as I could learn, for the mille, which is supposed to have some medicinal quality; and, whiles, to be led about by the keeper, with little arm-chairsaddles to take gentlemen's babies out for an airing. You will often meet two or three of these little horsemen led alofig by one man, each on its beasr, soon after their infant necks can hold the head un.Now the cab-men begin to take the stand in front of the . 'Foundling Hospital,' which is an excellent institution upon a large scale, and withah very convenient for the nobility, who patronize all such good and charitable places, as you vvillsee by the large letter inscription in front of most of them. Oh! it would make your good heart rejoice-or ache - according as you viewed the matter; to look into that spacious green yard in front of "The Foundling," and see a hundred or two of little slubbed, happy-looking fellows of six to ten years, nll nearIy of a size-all dressed in snuff-brown: undergoing a drill - their little short legs going ïight,' 'lef!,' 'right,' 'left:' sometimes commanded by one of their own number, and soinet'imes by a man; thus preparing in mind and body to enter her Majesty's service; and leave their places in the "Foundling" for their little brother-noblets who are on the way. These Foundling Hospitals on a smaller scale, are being introduced into our large cities, and ín Canada where [ h-ave travelled, & in' Roman Catholic countries generally they are in very good demand. In that connected. with the :Hotel Dieu" Nunnery, in Montreal, which I visiteo1 in 1833, I saw 150 legitímate infonfs in a single room, forty of whornwere the children of poor Iïïsh parents whodied of the cholera in a singlo montb - the oldest about 3 years, and all but a few of the youngest able frë walk alone. ít was indeed an interesting sight, more like to a nest containing seventeen young qimils than any thing I could think of; only they were more tanie, and carne up, in their little neat, clean frocks, stretching out their small, Cútiry hands, with an arch, roguish look of theeye - the whole of an ndescnkibly pleasing effect. I was also shown another room, containing nearly the sarnenumber, and of a like age; and of equally neat and pleasing appearance, but whose parents, (who were not known) unlike those of the Irish ïnfants, were living, yet in prospect of a. worse death than that by the cholera - if not here, yet hereafter. Now, it any of your readers shall be bold enough to scruple the propriety ofsuch a cFoundling' Institution under the same roof with a crowd of nuns, and thé whole under the key of a priesthood, bound to celibacy by an unnatural and unscnptural vow, I cannot help it. I am resporisible tor nothing but the facts I relate. For one, I have often thought that all human institutions which obstruct "marriage, the primeval law, and holy privilege of our race, - as camps, convenís, slavery, nunneries, priesthoods of men, doomed single, on whatever pretencesupported, have rotten timber in their foundation. And now the crowd is getting thtck, and the pólice man in blue suit, buttonsd snug up under the chin - straight collar labelled with his mistress' Victoriu's mark and his own number upon il, begin their stately walk lo and fro, to catch rogues - disperse n. crowd - knock down a ruffian & piek up a woman which is thrown from a carriage, or drunk, neither of which incidents is so very uncotnmon in London as could be desired. So my oves can testify.