and fixing the knife, or other steel article, in a sort of case which covers the upper side of it, and enables them to grind it more regularly, as it can not give way unequally,—they make the most brilliant posies of sparks stream from them at every pressure on the stone. Others polish the articles ground, by holding them to the edges of small wooden wheels covered with leather.

Grinders never live long; but the dry-grinders perish soonest, because the particles of sandstone are driven in whole clouds from the grindstones, and fill the whole air and the grinder's lungs. Five minutes in a dry-grinding room is quite sufficient to satisfy you of its nature and effects. We have seen Ebenezer Elliott's character of the grinder :

"There draws the grinder his laborious breath,
There coughing, at his deadly trade he bends;
Born to die young, he fears nor man nor death;
Scorning the future, what he earns he spends;
Debauch and riot are his bosom friends."

The Commissioners state, on the authority of Dr. Knight of Sheffield, that a dozen years ago the number of grinders was two thousand five hundred; the life of a wet-grinder seldom reached forty-five years; that of a dry-grinder not more than thirty-five. The number is now larger, and the average of life, according to other evidence, is shorter. Table-knife grinders work on wet stones, and are the longer lived; the fork-grinders work on dry stones, and are the short-lived ones. Children are put to this fatal trade at fourteen years old usually, but to some lighter branches as early as eight or nine years of age. They who have good constitutions seldom experience much inconvenience till they are about twenty years old, when the symptoms of their peculiar complaint begin to show themselves. They are affected with a terrible species of asthma, followed by a train of physical sufferings, which drag them piecemeal to the grave. Flues to carry off the dust have been intro.

duced into the wheels, but the men refuse to use them, and often kick them down and tread upon them. They get high wages, and think that if the trade were made innoxious, there would be more to enter it, and prices would fall. They are for a short life and a merry one. Those who drink most are often the longest lived, owing to their more frequent absence from their work. The doctors often say to those who come to consult them, "Now, if you go back to this trade you go back to die;" but this never had the effect of deterring them from going back, nor from apprenticing their children to the same fatal trade.

Inquiring in Sheffield where Ebenezer Elliott now resided, I was told, by five different persons, five different places. One said it was near Rotherham, another near Barnsley, another near Tickhill, another near Wakefield, and another near Pontefract. It turned out to be near Darfield, on the railroad between Rotherham and Wakefield. Getting out at the Darfield station, I found that I had a pleasant walk of three miles to his house, at some distance beyond the village of Great Houghton. The country is very different to that about Sheffield, in which Elliott seems to have taken such great delight. It is a fine farming country. The lanes have all a foot causeway of one row of stones, like those of Derbyshire; and, like it, the fields are rich with grass, and corn, and hedge-row trees. The village of Houghton, the only one that I saw, is a regular old farming village, with one large, old stone hall standing, about a hundred yards from the road, and falling evidently to decay, while the great stone wall which separates its grounds from the road, massy as it is, is equally dilapidated. Elliott's house, which he has built, is a good stone house in the style of the country, with a flag roof, and is fit for gentleman or farmer. It occupies the top of a hill on the edge of a common. It has a good garden lying round it; the views from it are fine and very extensive, including distant towns and villages, and here and there a great mass of

wood. There is a fine airiness about the situation; but the prospect of suitable society is not so easy to be perceived. One naturally connects the idea of Ebenezer Elliott and the brisk movements of a populous town; but he complains that the constant political excitements of a town had wearied him, and gave too much interruption to his literary enjoyments. Here certainly he has withdrawn to complete leisure for books and the country; and yet, if he need the intercourse with towns, the various railroads put half-adozen within the speediest access. He says that time, instead of hanging heavily, never went so fast with him. I found Ebenezer Elliott standing at his porch, with his huge Newfoundland dog beside him. I merely introduced myself as an admirer of his poetry, who had a desire in passing to pay my respects to him. He gave me a very cordial welcome. We entered his room, and were soon deep in conversation. And we were soon, too, high in conversation; for our talk, among other things, turning on a certain class of society, I happened to say that, "spite of all their faults as a class, many of them, as individuals, were very amiable people." This was a little too much for him. The latent fire of the Corn-Law Rhymer blazed up; he started from his chair, and pacing to and fro with his hands at his back, exclaimed, “Amiable men! amiable robbers! thieves! and murderers! Sir! I do not like to hear thieves, robbers, and murderers, called amiable men! Amiable men indeed! Who are they that have ruined trade, made bread dear, made murder wholesale, put poverty into prison, and made crimes of ignorance and misery? Sir! I do not like to hear such terms used for such men !"

I laughed, and said, "Well, Mr. Elliott, you and I shall certainly not quarrel about any such people; and I ought not to sit talking thus as a perfect stranger-it creates a false position and false conclusions." I then mentioned my name. He sprung across the room, caught hold of my offered hand with both his, gave it a great shake, and then

hastened out to call Mrs. Elliott. Very soon Mrs. Elliott and a daughter appeared, and we were speedily afloat on an ocean of talk. When people of the same tastes meet for the first time, and especially on a rainy day in the country, what a multitude of themes present themselves! Books, people, poetry, mesmerism, and heaven knows what, leave not room for silence to show his little finger in. Mrs. Elliott, a tall, good-looking woman, I soon found as ladylike, sensible, and well informed as any poet could desire for his companion. Miss Elliott, a fine-grown and comely, but very modest young lady, was the only one who did not act the part rather of talker than listener. For six hours, the time I stayed, it was one long, uninterrupted talk. The hearty host declared that I should not leave for a week; but England, Scotland, and Ireland lay before me, and only a limited time to traverse a good deal of them in. Yet what greater pleasure, could one command it, than a week with such a man— -far from the tone and spirit of coteries, in the heart of fresh and pure nature, with books, and woods, and flowery fields fanned by the purest breezes, to wander through, and compare the impressions of men and things, of great thoughts, great deeds, and great projects for the good of society, as they come before you unbiased and uncolored by the world as it shows its protean shapes in cities in the refined sneer, the jealous thought, the weary indifference of overstimulated tastes? Were I at liberty to pen down the dialogue of that one afternoon, in all its freedom of remark, it would make the brightest but most startling chapter of these volumes. But that can not be, and I must add nothing more to this article than simply to say, that in a strange place I should never have recognized Ebenezer Elliott by his portrait. There is no good one of him. He is somewhat above the middle height. He is sixty-five, but not old-looking for his years. His hair is white, and his manner and tone, except when excited by those topics that rouse his indignation against

cruelty and oppression, mild, soft, and full of feeling. Perhaps no man's spirit and presence are so entirely the spirit and presence of his poetry. Unlike many who could be named, who, drilled from youth into the spirit and tone of the gay circles that they frequent, present that spirit and tone there, and reserve the spirit and tone of the poet for the closet-men of two worlds, in the world of the world, in the closet of the world of mind-Ebenezer Elliott has conversed too much with nature, and with men in their rough, unsophisticated nature, to have merged one jot of his earnestness into conventionalism of tone or manner. In society or out of it he is one and the same-the poet and the man.