or hash'd, mixt, or minced: so do they the purest of their language; as, for example, when nurses teach children to go, instead of saying, Go, they say, Do, do; and instead of saying, Come to me, they say, Tum to me; and when they newly come out of a sleep, and cannot well open their eyes, they do not say, My child cannot well open his or her eyes, but My child tant open its nies; and when they should bid them speak, they bid them peak; and when they should ask them, if they will or would drink, they ask them if they will dinck; and so all the rest of the language they teach children is after this manner. Likewise they learn

them the rudest language first; as to bid them say, such a one lies, or to call them rogues and the like names, and then laugh as if it were a witty jest. And as they breed them in their language, so they breed them in their sports, pastimes, or exercises, as to play with children at bo-peep, blindman's-buff, and cock'shod."

"A gentleman ought to be skilful in the use of his sword, in the manage of horses, to vault, to wrestle, to dance: the first defends his honour and country; the next is for command in cavalry; the third makes him ready in the day of battle to horse himself; the fourth keeps him from being overcome by a clown or peasant, for the sleights in wrestling will overcome great strength; the fifth gives his limbs a graceful motion. His exercises should be masculine: for better it were to see a gentleman shoe a horse, than to play on the viol or lute, virginal, or any other musical instrument; for that sheweth the command man hath over beast. Or to carry a burthen on his back, than to sit idly at cards or dice: for idleness is like the sluggish worm, that is neither able to help nor defend itself."

"Some, in their praises of women, say, they never speak but their words are too many in number for the weight of the sense; besides, the ground of their discourse is impertinent, as enquiries who dined and who supped at such a table ; what looks, words, and actions passed among the company; what addresses such a man made to such a woman, and what encouragement they received in their courtships; then who was at court, who at church; or slandering or defam. ing one another; or bragging of themselves, what clothes they have or will have; what coaches or lacqueys, what love-servants they have or may have; what men are like to die for love of them;

what feast they made for such a company; who took them out to dance at such a ball; who ushered them out of church, and who they saw there, and not of what they heard there; and for their pastimes, say they are seldom at home but to receive visits. Neither are they pleased with the company of their own sex; for if there be no man amongst them, they are very dull, and as mute as one would wish; unless it be at a gossipping, where a cup of good liquor runs about.'

"All women are a kind of mounte banks; for they would make the world believe they are better than they are; and they do all they can to draw company; and their allurements is their dressing, dancing, painting, and the like; and when men are catcht, they laugh to see what fools they were to be taken with such toys: for women's ends are only to make men profess and protest, lie and forswear themselves in the admi. ration of them: for a woman's only delight is to be flattered of men; for they care not whether they love truly, or speak falsely, so they profess earnestly."

"Some parents suffer their children to run about into every dirty office, where the young master must learn to drink and play at cards with the kitchen-boy, and learn to kiss his mother's dirty maid for a mess of cream. The daughters are danced upon the knee of every clown and serving man, and hear them talk scurrilous to their maids, which is their complement of wooing, and then dancing Sellinger's Round with them at Christmas time."

"Some say a man is a nobler creature than a woman, because our Saviour took upon him the body of man; and another, that man was made first: but these two reasons are weak; for the Holy Spirit took upon him the shape of a dove, which creature is of less esteem than mankind; and, for the pre-eminency in creation, the devil was made before man.”*

Mrs. Piozzi gave a saffron colour to her cheeks by painting. Thousands, by following a very foolish and pernicious fashion, had done the same before her.

"Painting the face, when it is used for a good intent, as to keep or increase lawful affection, is, perhaps, admissible; but in a widow, painting is most disallowable-a widow once, a widow ever. I am utterly against the art of painting, out of three respects; the first is danger. ous for most paintings are mixed with

--

mercury, wherein is much quicksilver, which is of so subtle and malignant a nature, as it will fall from the head to the lungs, and cause consumptions, and is the cause of swelling about the neck and throat. The next is, that it is so far from adorning, that it disfigures: for it will rot the teeth, dim the eyes, and take away both the life and youth of a face, which is the greatest beauty. Thirdly, and lastly the sluttishness of it, and especially in the preparatives, as masks of sear-clothes, which are not only horrid to look upon, in that they seem as dead bodies embowelled or embalmed, but the stink is offensive. Then the pomatum and pultis, which are very uneasy to lie in, wet and greasy, and very unsavoury; for all the while they have it on it presents to the nose a chandler's shop, or a greasy dripping-pan, so as all the time they fry, as it were, in grease; neither will their perfumes mend it, or their oils: and though I cannot say they live in purgatory, because they shun all hot places, for they cannot have the comfortable heat of the fire, and shun the natural heat of the sun, as they must live always as if they were at the North Pole, for fear the heat should melt away their oil, and oily drops can be no grace to their face. Dry painting shrivels up the skin so, as it imprints age in their face, in filling it full of wrinkles; wherefore paintings are both dangerous, ill-favoured, and sluttish, besides the troublesome pains. But for other adornments in women, they are to be commended, as curling, powdering, pouncing, clothing, and all the varieties of accoutrement."

One of the most interesting works of the duchess's composition is a large folio volume of Sociable Letters, for so they are styled, 211 in number. The odd eleven are for individuals with names, the 200 to some madam, evidently an admirer of the duchess and her writings. There is no such thing as a date throughout the work, and names are distinguished by initials, which, provokingly enough, are of frequent occurrence. The letters, however, seem to have been written wholly abroad, and the collection was printed at London in 1664.

There is, of course, a complimentary copy of verses by the duke, and a letter of gratitude and extravagant adulation from the duchess, with a preface to all professors of learning and art, and another to the Many.

It may be said to me," she writes to her lord," as one said to a lady,' Work,

lady, work, let writing books alone, for surely wiser women ne'er writ one;' but your lordship here bid me to work, nor leave writing, except when you would persuade me to spare so much time from my study as to take the air for my health; the truth is, my lord, I cannot work, I mean such work as ladies use to pass their time withal: but I am not a dunce in all employments, for I understand the keeping of sheep, and ordering of a grange, indifferently well, although I do not busy myself much with it, by reason my scribbling takes away most part of my time." "As for the present book of letters," she writes, "I know not, as yet, what aspersion they will lay upon it, but I fear they'll say, they are not written in a mode style, that is, in a complimenting and romantical way, with high words and mystical expressions, as most of our modern letter-writers use to do."

The twenty-first letter contains a sad character of her sex.

"I observe," she says, "that cards is one of the chief pastimes of our sex, and their greatest delight; for few or none of our sex loves or delights in poetry, unless a copy of verses made in their praise, wherein, for the most part, is more flattery than wit." . . . "Neither doth our sex take much pleasure in harmonious music, only in violins to tread a measure; the truth is, the chief study of our sex is romances, wherein reading, they fall in love with the feigned heroes and carpet-knights, with whom their thoughts secretly commit adultery, and in their conversation and manner, or forms or phrases of speech, they imitate the romancy-ladies."

The forty-seventh letter is a long account of the pains that ladies take, and the cost they go to, in getting, making, and buying fine and costly child-bed linen, swaddling-clothes, mantles, and the like, their banquets jellies, and such strong drinks as hipof sweetmeats, cakes, wafers, biscuits, pocras and burnt wine, with hot spices, mulled sack, strong and highcoloured ale, well spiced and stuffed with toasts of cakes. This should be read with Letter сIII., where there is an account of a gossip-meeting.

Some of her descriptions are very lady to whom black patches had begraphic, such as that of the sanctified come abominable, and fans, ribands, pendants and necklaces, the temptations of Satan, and laced shoes and galoshoes, as so many steps to pride. (Lett. LI.)

"You were pleased, in your last letter," she writes (No. CXLVI.), "to request me to send you my opinion of Virgil and Ovid, as which I thought was the better poet. Truly, madam, my reason, skill, or understanding in poetry and poets is not sufficient to give a judgment of two such famous poets, for though I am a poetess, yet I am but a poetastress, or a petty poetess; but, howsoever, I am a legitimate poetical child of Nature, and though my poems, which are the body of the poetical soul, are not so beautiful and pleasing as the rest of her poetical childrens' bodies are, yet I am, nevertheless, her child, although but a brownet."

Here is a very beautiful picture of the qualities required of a balladsinger :

"The vulgar and plainer a voice is, the better it is for an old ballad; for a sweet voice with quavers, and trilloes, and the like, would be as improper for an old ballad, as golden laces on a thrown suit of cloth, diamond buckles on clouted or cobbled shoes, or a feather on a monk's hood; neither should old ballads be sung so much in a tune as in a tone, which tone is betwixt speaking and singing, for the sound is more than plain speaking and less than clear singing, and the rumming or humming of a wheel should be the music to that tone, for the humming is the noise the wheel makes in the turning round, which is not like the music of the spheres; and ballads are only proper to be sung by spinsters, and that only in cold winter nights, when a company of good housewives are drawing a thread of flax." Lett. CCII.

Her admiration of Davenant's Gondibert is made the subject of a letter, (No. cxxvII.), where she speaks with great discrimination when finding fault with the over-precision of his language and the compact closeness of his expressions, "for the language is like so curious and finely engraven a seal as one cannot readily see the figure engraven thereon without a magnifying glass."

Her love for the writings of Shakspeare breaks out in two or three places, nor has it been hitherto noticed that the duchess was among the first who dared to publish their admiration:

"I wonder," she writes, "how that person you mention in your letter could either have the conscience or confidence to dispraise Shakspeare's plays, as to say

they were made up only with clowns, fools, watchmen, and the like." "Shakspeare," she says, with admirable wit, "did not want wit to express to the life all sorts of persons, of what quality, possession, degree, breeding, or birth whatsoever; nor did he want wit to express the divers and different humours, or natures, or several passions in mankind; and so well he hath expressed in his plays all sorts of persons, as one would think he had been transformed into every one of those persons he hath described; and as sometimes one would think he was really himself the clown or jester he feigns, so one would think he was also the king and privy-counsellor; also as one would think he were really the coward he feigns, so one would think he were the most valiant and experienced soldier; who would not think he had been such a man as his Sir John Falstaff? and who would not think he had been Harry the Fifth and certainly Julius Cæsar, Augustus Cæsar, and Antonius did really never act their parts better, if so well, as he hath described them, and I believe that Antonius and Brutus did not speak better to the people than he had feigned them; nay, one would think that he had been metamorphosed from a man to a woman, for who could describe Cleopatra better than he has done, and many other females of his own creating? Who would not swear that he had been a noble lover? who could woo so well? and there is not any person he hath described in his book but his readers might think they were well acquainted with them."-Pp. 245, 6, 7.

All this is excellent, but when the duchess tells us, some hundred pages on (p. 338), that her husband is as far beyond Shakspeare for comical humour, as Shakspeare is beyond an ordinary poet in that way, we love and respect the wife, but laugh outright at the silly weakness of the

woman.

Here we stop, and in the belief, be it known, that our readers are as much in love with Margaret Lucas as Oliver Yorke is, or was old William Cavendish himself.

"Is this a lady's closet? 't cannot be,
For nothing here of vanity we see,
Nothing of curiosity or pride,

As most of ladies' closets have beside.
Scarcely a glass or mirror in't you find,
Excepting books, the mirror of the mind.
Nor is't a library, but only as she
Makes each place where she comes a
library."

"

THE warmest advocate for the advantages of luxury and civilisation in a state, cannot disguise from himself the melancholy truth, that to administer to that condition and those advantages, the privations and sufferings of many individuals must be increased in such a ratio as fully to bear out what otherwise would seem a paradox, that where there is the greatest wealth, there is the greatest misery. Whether it is that man, naturally tyrannical and arbitrary, shews this disposition more particularly when successful industry makes him less dependent on his fellowman, or that the excitement of competition, which is inseparable from wealth and aggrandisement, renders him selfish and hard-hearted, certain it is that at no period is it more necessary to protect the weak against the strong, than when one might suppose that increased security and abundance of every thing conducive to happiness or comfort would cause him to do all in his power to relieve the condition of those less prosperous or fortunate than himself. While this reflexion leads the speculative philosopher to examine and discuss the relative good or evil of luxury and refinement in the abstract, the practical philanthropist will endeavour to mitigate the disadvantages arising from them by wise and salutary laws. The sympathy of the British public has been awakened in behalf of those so hardly tasked under the factory system, and notwithstanding the opposition created against the measure by the advocates of what is termed uncontrolled freedom of labour, the Ten-hours' Bill will sooner or later become the law of the land, and the truth of that maxim of our poet, "Be just and fear not," be fully and universally recognised. At the very moment, however, that the hardships undergone by the youth of both sexes in the manufacturing districts have been engaging the attention of the

public mind, and the feelings of society have been harrowed by the piteous description of the trials they are exposed to in their round of daily toil, there has been discovered to exist a class of persons whose sufferings far exceed those of the poor mechanic or the factory-girl. I allude to the young women employed by the milliners and dress-makers to assist in their business, either as apprentices or day-workers, in large towns, more particularly in the metropolis. The object of the present article is, first, to enumerate some of those evils, physical and moral, which arise from the tyranny and severe tasking so generally practised in this department of trade; and, 2dly, to examine briefly if any remedies, legislative or otherwise, can be applied to a system of over-working so manifestly requiring alteration and improvement.

If we enter the work-room of some dress-maker in tolerable business, we shall see a number of girls, many of them pale and emaciated, crowded together, and under the superintendence of a forewoman, whose office it is to keep order and urge on the appointed task. Of these some are "apprentices," others are "dayworkers," the remainder are what are termed " improvers." The apprentices are placed with the proprietress of the establishment for a certain period, generally for about two or three years, sometimes five. They are apprenticed usually about the age of fourteen, and reside entirely on the premises. The premium, of course, varies according to the situation and notoriety of the house. It is sometimes as high as sixty guineas. The day-workers either live at home or in their own lodgings; they come to the dress-maker's from nine in the morning till nine at night, and receive from 1s. to 1s. 6d. per day. If required to work extra hours, they are paid accordingly. They bring their own dinners

with them, but are found in tea and sugar. The "improvers" are girls from seventeen to twenty years of age, who come up from the country, and remain usually six months with their employer, during which period they make themselves generally useful; their time is entirely at the disposal of the dress-maker; they reside with her, but receive no wages and pay no premium. During the London season, the fatigue they undergo is excessive. At a period of life when adequate rest, and even some relaxation, are absolutely necessary to the bodily health, they are confined, with scarcely any intermission for their meals, which they are frequently obliged to leave halffinished to return to their work, often till three or four o'clock in the morning, in a heated and unwholesome atmosphere. The whole frame exhausted, and the nervous system frequently too much unstrung for the enjoyment of the little sleep allowed them, they are expected to be early again at the work-table, and return with apparent cheerfulness to the toil which is silently sapping the secret springs of life. No wonder that many fall victims to untimely disease, or, escaping the immediate bad consequences, in after life become the mothers of an unhealthy and miserable offspring. It is lamentable to see the change that sometimes comes over the country girl shortly after her admission as an apprentice. Arriving, perhaps, from her happy village home, where she has been the pride of honest and industrious parents, her cheeks redolent of rosy health, her step elastic, her spirits light and buoyant, at first the novelty and excitement, and constant variety of the busy town amuse her; she delights in the companionship of girls of her own age, and strives to the utmost of her power to win the approbation and confidence of her employer. By degrees her pallid cheek and attenuated form shew that the loss of fresh air, and the absence of accustomed exercise, are eating into the bud of youth. Her appetite leaves her she sighs occasionally over her work, but utters no complaint. Then comes the short hacking cough, the supernaturally brilliant eye, the hectic spot. She is de

Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo

Demisere caput, pluviâ cum forte gravantur."-VIRG. Æn. ix.

This is not a highly coloured picture, sketched by fancy, but the history of many a poor girl, the words of truth and soberness. And if it be possible to prevent such tales from being so common, if we can devise any scheme for rescuing one victim from being immolated on the shrine of Vanity and Fashion, will not every Englishman and every Englishwoman-for much is in her power-join with us in the sacred work?

It appears that the diseases to which the young dress-maker is most subject are complaints of the liver and stomach. The constant waste which, to constitute vigorous health, must be carried on by means of the secretions, being interrupted by want of air and exercise, the circulation becomes languid and sluggish, the blood is loaded with impure humours, and congestion of the abdominal viscera necessarily ensues.

Not only are the sedentary habits of young dress-makers, so long continued, prejudicial to the full developement of the body, but the stooping position which they are obliged to adopt, with the head and neck bent forwards, are productive of serious mischief. Accordingly, spinal diseases, and the contortion commonly called the wry-neck, which arises from the sterno-mastoid muscle growing out of its natural place, are often the consequences of this position. It is not uncommon also to see disorders of the eyes, arising from painful and difficult work done by candle-light, sometimes by gas-light. It is at this time of the day that the young prisoners suffer most from confinement. After the atmosphere of the work-room has been corrupted by the numbers employed in it during the morning, perhaps during winter, when the windows have not been opened, the lighting of it up at night generates a quantity of carbonic acid, which it is extremely pernicious to breathe. If we