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however, is, at the altar, common as white muslin, and gives, to the spectator at least, by no means an unpleasant interest to the scene. Let the bride faint to her heart's content: the Pew-Opener-astute, experienced woman--is prepared for the sufferer. Suddenly, the bride, like a bent lily, declines her pale, beautiful head: the bridegroom looks helplessly around, when, close at his elbow, brought thither as by a charm, stands the Pew-Opener, with a goblet of crystal water, drawn that very morning from the spring, in readiness for the white lips of the newly-married. The glass is taken, and the Pew-Opener, profuse in her remedies, proffers a bottle of salts, kept hot in her hand for the last ten minutes.

Well, the swooning is past, and the signing is over, and (after the clerk and the beadle) the Pew-Opener takes the liberty of calling down upon the heads of the couple, now made one, all the very many blessings of this mortal world. Her disinterested wishes are generally rewarded; when, according to the sense manifested of their value, the youthful pair are sullenly dismissed from the thoughts of the Pew-Opener to the thorny ways of this bramble-skirted earth; or she pronounces them worthy of all happiness, "being as handsome a couple as ever the sun shone on."

There is another solemnity at which the Pew-Opener assists with considerable alacrity; that of baptism. Here her experience, her knowledge of the world, as picked up and cultivated in the temple of the Lord, stands her in exceeding help. She can at glance espy the respectable mothers and godmothers, the fathers well to do, and the godfathers of sufficient purse; and, benefiting by her knowledge, she bestows them in separate pews, wide away from the poorer sort. And there are babies whose eyes are blessed by the Pew-Opener with all the prodigality of sudden admiration, the eyes, perhaps, being entirely hidden by the costly lace about them: "darling little angels," whose month or six weeks' noses alone are visible; "cherubs," who have nought in common with the cherubic nature, except, indeed, in their continual crying.

We have spoken of marriage and baptism; there is a third ceremony at which the Pew-Opener is called upon to assist, at which she is unfeignedly a grave, a serious actress :-we speak of funerals. Here she has nought to hope: people with bursting hearts, and they who counterfeit sorrow, have no thoughts of fees; the Pew-Opener (save it be a public funeral, and the demand for seats is great) takes nothing from the hand of death: that is to her, cold, unprofitable indeed.

We thought to give the memoranda found among the papers

of

Abigail Spikenard, for two-and-thirty years Pew-Opener at the church of Saint -. They have been sent to us with full permission to use them as we list; yet are holy and profane things jotted down so confusedly together (good Mrs. Spikenard could, no doubt, easily separate them), that we almost fear to set them as they are before the reader. However, Mrs. Spikenard, in her spirit of generalisation, saw nothing indecorous in her mode of making notes; and, therefore, hoping that the reader will take the Pew-Opener in the guilelessness of her meaning, we will venture to present him with a very few notes taken at random from her journal :

"EPIPHANY.-Short sermo",-hard frost: sixpence from woman in red cloak. "SEXAGESIMA.-The dear Bishop of Manna preached;-moving discourse; -run off my legs;-full church;-seven shillings and sixpence,—bad halfcrown;-suspect lady in blue velvet, yellow bonnet, and red poppy wreath.

"EASTER MONDAY.-Ten couple married; made only a pound: refused, out of spirit, from one two, a sixpence :-shall know the fellow if he ventures again. Oiled pew-locks.

"SHROVE SUNDAY.-Again, Bishop of Manna; long sermon, and rather hot. Lady fainted in crowd-a shilling. Saw person in blue velvet; mentioned bad half-crown: she wondered at my impudence! Where will she go to?

"Christening in afternoon: shabby parents, noisy brats; godmothers and godfathers shocking ignorant of what becomes 'em. Woman with twins only give as much as them with one. A poor day early home to tea; left off muffins for the season.

"ROGATION.-New bishop-whitest hand ever saw. Crowded church; beautiful discourse again lusts of the flesh and vanities of the world. Lovely carriage of the bishop's, and footmen fine and tall. Ladies sobbing; a sweet sermon: fifteen shillings. Do people come to church to pass off bad money?—another Brummagem sixpence!"

We will quote no further, for we fear there is, despite of the simplicity of Mrs. Spikenard, a certain irreverence in her style,—a neglect of the spiritual in her care for the worldly.

Oh, ye "pillars of unshaken orthodoxy !" ye, raised in station, educated for the ministry: ye who preach the gladness of glad tidings; ye in finest lawn, see that in your yearnings for the goods of earth, in your daily intercourse with the ignorant laity, yea, even thundering in the pulpit, see, in heart and soul, ye sin no worse than the lowly, ignorant Pew-Opener.

We have read the discourse against the vanities of the world, as preached by the white-palmed bishop; and we have read his three hours' speech made two nights before on the Beer Act. Verily, the two compositions did somewhat remind us of the memoranda of the worthy Mrs. Spikenard.

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I reverence these young Africans of our own growth-who from their little pulpits (the tops of chimnies) in the nipping air of a December morning preach a lesson of patience to mankind.

ESSAYS OF ELIA.

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.

BY JOHN OGDEN.

"WE are losing all our privileges." Time was and is not long past when it would have been accounted an audacious violation of established and venerable custom, for either author or artist to approach the dingy subject of this sketch with any other expression on his countenance than that of premeditated facetiousness. In inverse ratio to the blackness of the original, was the lightness of the colours in which its representation was invariably decorated ;— as a negro, it will be observed, generally rejoices in the whitest of neckcloths; or as the external sombreness of a Venetian gondola is supposed to indicate the high state of hilarity and enjoyment of the company it encloses.

It will not hereafter be for us to boast that "we have changed all that." Truth to say, the holiday practice, on which former delineators mainly founded their delusive representations of sooty joyousness, has changed itself, without consulting us on the subject; and we, as faithful chroniclers of things as they are, do but accommodate ourselves to existing circumstances, while handling the topic in more sober vein ;-in a state of feeling better suited to the general condition of our unconscious sable sitter, yet not altogether alien to the cheerful point of view in which our 'merry masters," the public, have been accustomed to contemplate his injured visage.

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"Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the East, and brings with her
The flowery May,"-

says Milton; and, whilome, so surely came dancing, on the first of the month-not only from the East, but from all points of the compass the grotesque caricatures of "My Lord" and "My Lady," "Jack-in-the-Green," and an anomalous route of followers, “black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery," sporting on toe far less light than fantastic, and gladdening the lieges of London with a welcome relief to the monotony of daily mechanic life. Nay, though "Winter lingering chilled the lap of May" (as is too much the

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