that the annals of my adopted country was not stained by deeds so barbarous and unmanly. Says I to the warden, "your Fiddlers and Trollopes talk of refinement-the standard of refinement is estimated in all countries by the respect in which their women are held. Now, sir, were they to attempt in America to cut off the head of a beautiful woman, every rifle, from Maine to Georgia, would be raised in her defence." He smiled at my remark. He soon observed that, from my tongue, he should take me for a Scotchman. I said I thought the same of him-it was the case; and being countrymen, he conducted me around, and described every thing with great attention.

I saw in London women, dressed neat and clean, trundelling wheelbarrows in the middle of the streets, seemingly carrying home or taking clothes to be washed. In the markets of London and Liverpool are thousands of women, who make their living by carrying home the meat and vegetables. They have round baskets which they place on their heads. I have met delicate, good looking females, trembling under the loads they carried. You may see them in groups and rows, their baskets in hand. As you pass along the market, you are interrogated at every step, with "sir, do you want a basket?"—"Please, sir, to take a basket," &c.

It don't seem to be the custom in London to take a servant with them to market.

I also saw a woman on the highway breaking stones to Macadamize the road. On another occasion I saw a woman having a young child buckled on her back. She was driving a one horse cart laden with coals, going up a steep part of the road, and the load being rather heavy for the horse, she took hold of the wheel and

helped it to roll along till she got to the top of the hill. I thought this was most emphatically clapping the shoulder to the wheel. I thought if Mrs. Trollope and Fiddler had seen such things in America, what a fine subject it would have been for them to make a book. I attended service in many Chapels, Churches, Cathedrals and Abbeys, in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, (the resort of fashion.) In the former I heard the Lord Bishop of Gloucester read prayers. I thought (at the time) that our own Bishop Onderdonk reads better. I there saw old and young men sitting at the head of the pews, when the ladies were sitting next to the door.

I saw a black whiskered dandy, apparently about twenty-seven; he was sitting alone, just inside of the pew door. A genteel young lady came to the pew; but, instead of opening the door and giving her the place which common decency and common sense assigned as her's, he shoved his own ugly carcass ahead, and let her sit next to the door. I saw young men sitting, and respectable-looking females standing-some of them old enough to be their mothers or grand-mothers, and some of them young enough to have been their sisters. Perhaps it were hardly worth noticing these things, were it not that the Halls, Trollopes, &c., have the modesty to tax the Americans with want of refinement! Now, as far as I can observe, if the remark be true, that respect paid to the women is the true standard of refinement, I think America is at least half a century ahead of these London folks. In short, many, very many, of the laborious and menial offices are here formed by women.

per

With regard to manners, you will here receive the very essence of hospitality and kind attention; to be

sure, you will see the heighth of splendour and affluence contrasted with the most abject poverty; but here, as well as almost every where else, excess in drinking lies at the bottom of this evil. Every where there is the greatest appearance of plenty. I met in company, the other day, a real John Bull; he sat puffing and blowing with corpulence. His very eyes stood out with fatness, as if ready to start from their sockets; in short, he was a real Falstaff. There he sat grumbling about taxes, tithes, poor rates, &c. We had picked an acquaintance and could make free. Says I, my friend, you look, at any rate, as if you got your allowance. He and his friends had a hearty laugh, which ended the political lecture.

The quantities of meat in the markets of London are almost frightful to look at; besides, in every street, they have large butchers' shops, which, from 3 till 11 o'clock P. M., are most brilliantly lighted up with gas; and, as they have a peculiarly neat way of cutting up their meat, their shops show to fine advantage. Their hundreds of benevolent institutions for the maimed, the sick, the halt, and the blind; their multitudes of princely buildings, where tens of thousands of poor children are fed, clothed, and instructed; their hospitals and churches; their soldiers' and sailors' retreats, &c., form, altogether, such a mass of good, as makes the heart exclaim, "such only are thy fruits, O Christianity!" and imparts to the mind something like a confidence, that a country where so much good will is shown to man, will stand against all the assaults of external and internal foes, till the day arrives when her palaces and hospitals, with the globe itself, shall shiver in the blaze.

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It is both amusing and interesting to see the children of the various charitable institutions dressed in the costume of the day, which bears the date of the founding of them some, seven hundred years ago.

CHAPTER III.

London-its Charitable Institutions-Police-Barber

Shops, &c.

I SAW nothing in London that pleased me so much as their charitable benevolent institutions. London contains 43 free schools, with perpetual endowments for educating and maintaining nearly 4,000 children; 17 other schools for poor and deserted children; 237 parish schools, supported by voluntary contribu tions, &c., in which about 10 or 12,000 boys and girls are constantly clothed and educated; 3 colleges; 22 hospitals for sick, lame, and indigent women; 107 almshouses for the maintenance of aged persons of both sexes; 18 institutions for the support of the poor of various descriptions, and about 30 dispensaries for the gratuitous supply of medicine and medical aid to the helpless in all cases. Besides these various establishments, each parish has a work-house for the occupation and maintenance of its own distressed or helpless poor; and the several Trades Companies of the City of London distribute about 75,000 pounds sterling, nearly $375,000, annually in charities. The sums expended among the other public charities, is computed at not less than 850,000 pounds, or $4,250,000 per annum. The hospitals, alms-houses and free schools, were chiefly founded by private persons, or incorporated bodies of tradesmen. Many of them are endowed with