gathered together ragged children for the same purpose. There is a little difficulty about the opening of public playgrouds on Sunday. Could they be better employed than in the way indicated? There will be a shed and seats in each, and it would be pleasant to hear or officiate at the reading to ragged boys and girls, which, in many instances, would prepare the way for Sunday school and church.

Is there not work for all? Let all who can, unite in this labor; and while we look for the fresh blossoms in our parks and playgrounds, we shall find the fruits in our own happy feelings, and in the happiness and enlightenment of the souls brought nearer to the Source of all blessings.

NOTE.-C. Melly, Esq., of Liverpool, who has benefitted his town by the gift of drinking fountains for the people, of which, during the present hot weather, "thousands are availing themselves," has conferred on them the additional boon of a playground, which was opened on the first of June, very quietly. "In half an hour afterwards five or six hundred people of the right sort, mechanics and their wives, &c., crowded there, and gave such cheers as only strong nerves could bear. The see-saws were a great success, and almost too crowded to be able to work. The following address was placed in the ground, and copies of it circulated among the people."

FREE PUBLIC GYMNASIUM.

TO THE WORKING CLASSES.

FRIENDS,

This Playground is intended for your enjoyment, and is placed under your care. The Poles, Ropes, Ladders, and Chains, will bear any fair usage; it will be for you to protect them from wilful damage. The Trees will adorn your Playground if they are allowed to grow up, and you will, I am sure, prevent them from being destroyed. This Playground, is hereby placed in your hands; let it be used for the purposes for which it is obviously intended. Let good humour and good temper prevail. Let there be no quarrelling among yourselves; and allow no stone throwing, or fighting among your younger members. It rests with you whether the first attempt at free out-door amusement in our town be a success or a failure.

Liverpool, June 1st, 1858.

CHARLES P. MELLY.

XLIV. A MYSTERY.

HE sitteth in an ancient hall ;
He sees the daylight rise and fall;
He hears the tyrant Tempest call;

Sitting and singing there alone:

The golden glories of the skies,
The silver stars become his prize;
The sapphire lamps (young maidens' eyes)
Are all his own, his own.

He sitteth in the ancient hall,
An ancient sage, a hoary seer;
He sees the pictures of the past,

In airy colors, bright and clear;
He knoweth where the winds have fled,
And where the spring-time of the year.

From hidden caves of sea and land

A faint, wild, wondrous music rings,
And forth he puts his wizard hand,
And touches the Æolian strings.
Life issues forth beside him, bland,

And Death, victorious, laughs and sings.

For things that come must elsewhere go,
And things that breathe must fade and die;

So Life comes with the winds that blow,
And Death he closeth many an eye;

And all that Genius, Virtue know
Pass hence unto their home, the sky.

He sees all things that are and were,
The smiles that shone, the tears that fell;
The subtlest thought that poet dreamed

His tongue-would he but speak-can tell ; He seeth and heareth everything,

From the wedding note to the passing bell.

How long shall such a Despot reign,
And sweep into his gloomy store
All riches that the earth and main
In all their fruitful seasons bore ?
How long?-Until the world shall wane,
And weary Time shall be no more!

XLV.—THE DRESSMAKER'S LIFE.

THE following is the history of a dressmaker,-not the fictitious history of an imaginary specimen of that class, but a simple statement of the facts in a real life. Such a narrative will best illustrate the condition of the class; for the points in which the individual differs from the class, as well as those in which she finds herself in the position of the generality, being alike faithfully presented, that condition will be more clearly revealed than it could be by mere general statements.

The narrative was thus communicated:- -"At the age of thirteen I was left an orphan, in a large and fashionable provincial town, in which I owned not a single relative; and, owing to circumstances which need not be entered into, not a single relative owned me in all the world besides. My mother left something under a hundred pounds, perhaps about eighty, and with this slender provision I was left to the care of one or two friends, to whom my mother, in her last illness, confided me. This sum was too small to admit of my being educated for a governess, even of the humblest order, while my fitness for such a career, and its general advantages, were both matters of doubt to the cautious old ladies who had the determining of my fate. I write this to shew, that it is not women of the most indigent class alone who become dressmakers and milliners, but that the class from which they are often drawn verges closely on what is called the educated one, dressmaking being a species of skilled labor, and requiring some little capital of time and money to start with. "It was decided then that I was to be a first-rate dressmaker. I was accordingly introduced into a first-class house of business, in which they received none but well-educated, and perfectly respectable, young people. Twenty pounds were paid for my board the first year, this sum to diminish yearly, as I grew more useful to my employers, and at the end of three years I was to receive a small salary. It was a pretty large establishment. Twelve of the girls were inmates, and sometimes as many out-door workers were employed as improvers, when they paid for admittance and leave to labor, or as paid journey-women when there was a pressure of work. In these respects it was like similar establishments in great towns. and in the metropolis. In respect to its arrangements, it was superior to most. The busy season- -different from the London season, for it began in October, and lasted well nigh through the winter and spring-was just commencing when I entered on my engagement.

"But so much was new to me in the situation, so varied were the characters that attracted my quiet observation, and perhaps so saddened was my mind by recent bereavement, that I did not at first feel the deprivation of my liberty; and without murmuring' crossed the threshold of our prison only on Sabbath morning, to return, at a stated hour on the same evening, for another six days'

unbroken task. But before many weeks had passed, the dreary monotony of the existence upon which I had entered, began to dawn upon me; its more real hardships were as yet unfelt, and I envied the sadly over-worked little message girl, who, carrying a basket as large as herself, trotted about from morning till night. The food provided for us was plain, but wholesome, and not insufficient in quantity, except to those whose digestive organs were in a state of great activity, which was sometimes the case with new-comers. But very seldom did a vigorous appetite continue long to trouble them. On the whole, there was little to create discontent in this respect, if there had been no other reason of complaint, but the diet was not sufficiently light and nourishing to be wholesome, when the long hours spent in sedentary labor are taken into account. These hours, varied of course by the greater or less pressure of business, were from fourteen to sixteen, and occasionally, even eighteen hours a day. No stated time was allowed for meals; at each meal we spent simply the shortest time in which it was possible to eat what was set before us, wash our hands, and begin again.

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One of the rules of the house was to have prayers in the evening read by the head of the establishment, but in the height of the season they were sometimes omitted; while, even after fifteen hours,—the average of at least six months in the year,-many a one among us was asleep upon her knees, awakening at the cessation of the voice that had lulled into unconsciousness the overtasked frame. We slept in the garrets, two in each bed, and two beds in each room; save one, which was too small to admit of more than one,—indeed so small that the only place in which a bed could stand would not allow of its tenant assuming an upright position, without coming in contact with the roof. Four individuals, each in possession of at least a trunk and bonnet box, having to dispose of themselves and their belongings in one small room, had not, it may be supposed, much room to stir about. These rooms were also bitterly cold in the winter, and perfectly stifling in the summer. They were, however, kept scrupulously clean, which is not the case in every establishment of the kind; and in none, I believe, is the sleeping accommodation much better than that I have described.

"From fifteen to eighteen hours work a day, continued for weeks!— absolutely no exercise for six days out of the seven !—sleeping in a space so confined, that that allowed to the prisoner, the pauper, or even the soldier in barracks, is in comparison extensive!—it is impossible,' incredulous people say, 'the human constitution could not endure it." It does not endure it long; it is, indeed, capable of enduring it only for a very short period without injury, but that injury widely inflicted as it is, does not appear on the surface of things. I have said that the class from which dressmakers and milliners are drawn, is not the most indigent, I will tell you how its ranks are filled up; in the first place, there is a continual influx from the country of fresh recruits, who do not remain at the business for more

than a year. They are perhaps daughters of respectable tradesmen, who have learnt the business at their leisure, and practised it at home, and who wishing to start in a more public and imposing manner in their native place, come up to town a year to finish. Such inmates are of course but temporarily affected by the discipline of their new life, though even a year of it will effect deep-seated derangement of the stomach, with vomiting after meals, and other painful symptoms. The out-door workers too, have some slight relief in the walk to and from their place of business, and the impossibility, long as their hours frequently are, of protracting them beyond a certain length. The burden then chiefly falls on the trained hands, who are hired for efficiency and can be depended on, and even they do not spend many years of womanhood at such work. If any one could look round the work-tables of the metropolis, they would see none who had grown old at their task, and very few faces, even of middle age: they would see chiefly girls struggling on, even gaily, beneath the burden which will one day crush them if they escape not from beneath it; and early womanhood, pining patiently and impatiently under its yoke. The seeds of disease already rooted in the latter, already falling on the former.

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I must give an account of our pleasures, however, and return to the last sad portion of my subject, as I shall have occasion to do hereafter. In the little room which I occupied with three companions, all was not weariness and gloom. My unfortunate age, too old to be made a pet, too young to be the companion of three grownup women, excluded me for a long time from all their more confidential intercourse, and I was left at any period of leisure which fell to our lot, to a corner under the skylight in summer, or a position on two adjoining boxes in winter, on one of which I sat, while on the other stood my candle. There I pored quietly over my books, borrowed from various sources, while my three elders surrounded the tiny table, in close conversation, one or other working at some private needlework, or conducting a voluminous correspondence. It was not till my first three years had expired, that I was fully taken into this little conclave, in which during that period I had seen several changes. In the slack season we cleared away about eight o'clock, and were then at liberty to visit the outer world. Ten was the hour of return, and it was strictly observed, never indeed violated, except in the instance of some young lady accompanied home by an agreeable companion of the other sex, who found the door closed against her until prayers were over, and who was therefore forced, perhaps ungrudgingly, to perambulate the neighbourhood for the next quarter of an hour; but the offence was seldom repeated, for even if the delinquent enjoyed the laughing surmises of her companions, she quailed beneath the politely sharp enquiries of our superior. Not so strictly kept however, was the rule to be in bed an hour after these excursions; the lights were seldom out at the appointed time, and even after they were extinguished, long whis

VOL. I.

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