of fire, falling chimnies, together with monstrous and frightful forms, spectral and appalling, passed in review before him; these soon gradually disappeared-a veil was drawn over them, and only a slight unextinguished perception of pain remained; but whether as annexed to life or death, he knew not. How long it lasted he could not tell. On recovering animation, he found himself in an apothecary's shop, whither he had been carried by order of the gentleman who owned the premises. He had been pent up a considerable time in the chimney, and was only released by the exertions of a bricklayer, who found it necessary to break down the wall, in order to extricate him.

Such was the routine of barbarities, inseparable from his employment; and to such are children devoted, whom avarice, or want of natural affec tion bind them to it for the paltry gain of a few pounds. Life to them is rendered a cruel gift; hope, faith, and immortality, they know not, feel not -the tidings of the Gospel never reach their ears. Crime is their companion, sin their relaxation, and moral darkness, thick and palpable, the only light in which they walk. To such a state of existence, slavery in any land, is comparative happiness-all the curses of humanity seem to accumulate upon them; their minds are uncultivated, their hearts hardened, and their feelings seared, and set to cruelty. Suffering is their portion, slavery in its most formidable shape, their doom; and alas, evil their god. Yet, who would think that all this is to be found, rank, foul, and prominent in the midst of a Christian metropolis! Ah! ye rich-ye proud, and ye unfeeling methinks I see in the shadows of approaching events, the curses which the cries of the poor have called down upon your heads, deepening with the vengeance of him, who is the God of the fatherless, the slave, and the oppressed!

One morning, when the orphan's term was nearly expired, he and his master were returning from a bouse in the suburbs, the chimnies of which they had been sweeping. Their direct path lay through one of those almost dilapidated alleys, where filth, famine, and crime, form so disgusting a combination. They were passing the open hall of an old tottering house, the windows of which were stopped with rags, when Nowlan accidentally casting his eye into the hall, discovered a female stretched, as it appeared, either in drunkenness or sleep. On mentioning the circumstance to his master, they both entered, partly from curiosity, and partly from a vague thought of death. They attempted first to awaken her-but on a closer examination, they found she was cold-utterly dead. Her face was concealed by an old patched cloak, which she had rolled about her; on removing this, judge of the orphan's horror, when he recognized the features. of his mother. As the hour was yet early, and the city in profound sleep, a thought struck Branagan, who, by the assistance of the orphan, got her on his back, and at a rapid pace conveyed her home, where she remained in the black hole, laid out formally, but with as much secrecy as possible, lest her son might suspect the object which this remorseless villain had in view. At five o'clock the next morning, the boy was sent out, and on his return the body of his mother had been removed; Branagan brought him in the course of the day to Kilmainham burying-place, and pointing out a new made grave, declared it was that in which he had interred her.

Beyond this, there was nothing remarkable for many years, in Nowlan's life. He grew up deformed, feeble, and ignorant of any thing that an immortal being should know. On arriving at man's estate, he found himself, in consequence of his size, incapable of working at the employment to which he had been brought up. This indeed is a remarkable feature in

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their loathsome trade: for the moment their apprenticeship is expired, they find themselves too much grown to follow their business; so that their acute and varied sufferings are universally borne in the tender interval between youth and childhood, when they are least capable of bearing them, and have a stronger claim upon human pity. They are children-poor things, and cannot defend themselves against the united tyranny of strength and cruelty. The distress which he now began to feel was the more severe, because he was ignorant of every other means of procuring himself subsistence; he spent his time at pitch and toss, and other kinds of small gambling, practised principally upon the Sabbath; and he might be seen among a knot of growing and grown vagabonds upon a piece of waste ground, or at some open outlet of the city-a hackuied impostor, trained to villany and idleness-his only lodging at night, a waste house, or the warm steams of a lime-kiln. Having no moral or religious principle to check him, he soon arose among such associates, from one gradation of crime to another, till at length he was seized, convicted of highway robbery, and sentenced to be executed.

Now, it so happened, that the chaplain of the gaol, on whom, of course, the duty of preparing convicts for that awful change which confronts them with an offended God, was prevented by illness from attending them. As is usual, however, on such occasions, he sent as a substitute a young clergyman lately appointed to a curacy in the metropolis. Nowlan, whom we have throughout this narrative, called after his mother's name, for reasons which it is not necessary to state, remembering that his father had been a Protestant, reported himself as such, and was consequently attended by the young clergyman in question. The interview between them took place in the hospital, where Nowlan lay at the point of death. When the minister entered, he found the Doctor in conversation with him; and on inquiring from that gentleman into the state of his health, he was answered, that he could not possibly live until the day appointed for his execution. "He denies," said the Doctor, "and swears that he never was a climbing boy; but his denials are false-for his complaint is the chimney sweep's cancer, and it is now in such a state, that ere three days, his bowels will drop out of him. It is a disease to which adult sweeps are subject, and truly a painful and loathsome one, if not checked on its first appearance by an operation." The Doctor departed; but Nowlan, who had given up the business of a sweep from necessity, now disclaimed the character of one from pride and an innate hatred to it; he swore deeply, that it was a false surmise, and assured the clergyman that he had never been a single day at such a low abominable business. "My name," said he, "is father was respectable, and so were his relations."

, my

"Pray, what was your mother's name?" said the clergyman. "Nowlan," replied the other, "but don't mention her, for she was as bad and wicked a woman as ever lived. She died as she ought to do, in a fit of drunkenness, one night somewhere in Bull-alley-my curse upon her! I am now, Sir, what you see me, in consequence of her villany: and what is more, Sir, for there is no use in concealing it, now that I am so near death-what the Doctor said, is true-I was sold by her to a sweep in Bow-bridge, and on him may all the curses of heaven and earth fall! Oh! Sir, if you knew what I suffered"—and as he spoke, the burning tears gushed from his eyes-" if you knew what I suffered, you would pity

me!"

The clergyman sat down, placed his face in his hands, and groaned deeply-in the emaciated countenance of the wretch, who lay in such an

awful state before him, he recognized the features of his own family-he raised his eyes with sorrow

"Your name," said he, "is John ?"

"It is," said the other.

"Had you brothers ?"

"I had," said Nowlan, "two brothers and one sister.” "Do you remember their names ?"

"I do, Sir; my sister's name was Margaret, my eldest brother's, James, and his, who was next to myself, was Thomas-I loved him best, for we always played together--he had fair hair, and promised to be tall. Yes!" said the unhappy convict, "if he heard of my state, or knew how I am now, he would come to see me; but I was always ashamed to go near them -yes, his name was Thomas!"

"I am that Thomas," replied the clergyman-"lost and miserable, and unfortunate as you appear to be, yet you are my brother, and as a brother, I must feel for you;" he was in tears.

It was many a long year since the orphan's heart had been approached in the shape of kindness or affection. The name of a brother had power over the forgotten sympathies that slumbered within him-he eagerly caught his brother's hand, and looked up with the yearning attachment of nature into his face he stretched out his arms to him-he sobbed aloud, rapidly, and deeply-his brother with emotion equal to his own embraced him; but the effort, the agitation, and the muscular exertion, in consequence of the nature of his disease, were fatal to the orphan-he gave a deep groan-his head then fell back, and he expired.

When his brother saw that he was dead, nature vindicated in his grief the power of her own sympathies; he wept over him, took his lifeless hand in his, and with eyes still streaming, surveyed him with an interest, excited by the melancholy discovery he had just made. Every feature was examined with an affectionate wish to recognise in it the traces of that beauty and intelligence for which he had in his boyhood been remarkable. As he looked upon him he thought of the long lapse of years that had passed since the dream of their early life; and of the incredible change which the convict's habits of living had produced in his appearance and character. Still there remained enough in his pallid face to display so far as features can display it, the undeniable evidences of great reach of thought -uncommon symmetry, and gentleness of disposition. During the few moments which he passed with him, he had endeavoured to lead him to the "fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness," and to preach that blessed name which even to a dying thief proved as ointment poured forth." The effect he knew not-he left it to Him whose eye rests upon the heart-but the uncertainty was exquisitely painful. "Alas, my unhappy brother," he exclaimed, "what might you not have been, had the blessed advantages of education and religious improvement been extended to you! But these were denied you; misery, ignorance, and crime, were your portion here--and alas! they are always the portion of the class whose degraded name you would have disclaimed. Whether thou wilt be holy and happy or sinful and miserable to all eternity, I cannot tell-thou art now before God-and the mercies of God who can comprehend!” He then laid down his head gently, and left the room with an intention to give orders for his decent interment.

WILTON.

THREE WEEKS IN SCOTLAND.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SIR-The contribution you have asked from me, I do not desire to withhold, though aware that my tours, when occasionally admitted into your Miscellany, have been objected to by many, as being of too light a character for a religious periodical. But as you have always professed that entertaining subjects were not intended to be excluded from your pages, and as in the present instance you have called on me, I avail myself of my own propensities, as well as of your request, to go a touring. I believe, it is not the first time I have told your readers that I feel at the opening out of spring, as sure as the blowing of the primrose or violet, a certain impulse for travelling. I begin to sicken at streets, flags, brick houses, and ironpallisadoed squares, and find a sort of elective attraction pulling me away to the hills, woods, and waters, where the spring time of my life was spent. Therefore, (as is now, alas, the case,) since I cannot burst forth from my grub-like state in town, to take flickering flight like a capricious butterfly, I even do the best I can; and in order to let the blood of my fancy flow, I give it vent by sitting down to idealize a journey, and write a tour-if [ cannot take one I make one-if I cannot exercise my limbs in rambling over new scenes, I spur away at memory, and task it to recall what I had seen and heard, and spoken and thought, on former occasions. I do not ask you, Sir, to excuse these outbreakings of egotism; I only ask you to bear with them. If you saw my head with a Spurzeimite eye, you could not fail to observe that I am provided largely with self esteem, as well as with the organ of locality. How can I then help my nature ?-there is no use in attempting to dislodge propensities, if you believe the poet, even though you took an iron fork to force them out: besides, egotism is one of the accessaries that distinguish a tourist from a traveller, and bespeak his ephemeral character, as much as the painted powder on a butterfly's wing distinguishes its unworthiness from the valuable and laborious character of the busy bee.

I therefore am now set down to try my hand at a new subject: hitherto I have carried your readers along with me from Cape Clear to the Causeway, from the lonely seclusion of Glengariff to the mountain monastery and ecclesiastical city of St. Kevin; and I confess, though I will not allow that my recollection of my native land is exhausted, as, perhaps, I may show you by and by, yet I would like to try my pen upon Scotland. I spent a very pleasant period of three weeks there some time ago-1 saw the surface of a great many things and people; let me then try what hand I can make of my reminiscences-and yet I confess I have my fears. I am not now as I was at Glengariff or Inchigeela, where I broke into a fresh field, and had the merit of describing better than any one else, for the best reason in the world, because no one had ventured to do it but myself; but this is not the case with Scotland, for not a place on the globe has been so renommè'd as the French would say, in tale, tour, history, and statistics; every bill and dale, every mountain, and every moor, every building, nay, even every rock is noticed, and made famous for incident and legendwhat new or pleasant, or profitable thing can I bring out? why nothingjust nothing but, as cooks are not called on to dress new meat, but still to modify, toss up and fricasee beef, veal, fish, fowl, and mutton; so, with your readers leave, I may be allowed to disencumber myself of the

travelling storge; and ruminate on what caught my attention and amused my mind in Scottish lands.

I might say not a little, concerning what I saw in proceeding from Dublin to Belfast; and some time or other I may, perhaps, prove in your pages, that I was not altogether asleep, while skirting along this line of coast. But at present let it pass; and so I am on board the steamer -the Rob Roy-fizzing and smoking away, alongside Belfast quay, on as wet and stormy an evening ever a poor landsman would desire to take to sea with him. Early in May, our Irish summer-as some one before now has said-had set in with its usual severity; and our variable climate was exhibiting a sure specimen how oft" winter lingers on the lap of spring." The Belfast Lough, is, no doubt, a fine and beautiful bay, when gladdened with good weather: and a Belfast man would look disappointed, if you did not say it was magnificent. But still, I shall say, it is infinitely inferior to Dublin or Carlingford bays, to Cork harbour-not to speak of the sublime grandeur of Bantry Bay and Lough Swilly. It is, in fact, only those who come over from the execrably ugly shores of Lancashire, and have just left the sandy banks and muddy waters of the Mersey, that can speak charmingly of Belfast Lough. On the evening of my departure for Glasgow, nothing could be more desolate, turbulent, and disheartening; the heavens obscured with a murkiness that sent down plentifully its thick moisture; the wind blowing in fitful gusts from the east; the tide nearly half out and the river channel along which we paddled in its sinuous windings, surrounded on all sides by mud banks, clothed with a green mantle of saline and putrid vegetation, over which the curlew sent its desolate piping, and the cormorant skimmed and croaked, as if from its ugly and obscene throat, there was screamed the wish, that before morning he might have the pleasure of alighting upon our floating corpses; while the gulls, as they soared over our heads, gave their white wings to the wind, in fearful contrast to the blackness of the heavens, through which the creatures were disporting.

I confess as I turned my view towards the mouth of the harbour, and saw sea and sky undistinguishably mingled, and heard the roar of the waves on the distant cliffs, and saw the larger vessels in the offing tossing at their anchorages, I felt no small longing to be on shore; thought of my wife and children; wished I had brought with me a life-preserver; fancied I was already cast away, and swimming to shore; felt almost the foot of the filthy cormorant, as it alighted on my head, and sunk me down to rise no more-but as a corpse. There is nothing a man is more apt to seek, when inclined to fearfulness, than the countenance and support of his fellow man alas! though he knows it has often failed, yet he will seek such a refuge, even before he flies to the consolations of religion, and the stay upon his God. In this way I addressed myself to a tall, comely, clerical-looking person, who, with quiet, composed, but serious aspect, was, with eye-glass up, scanning the turmoil of the elements.

"It is a very fearful evening, Sir," said I, in a sort of inquiring way; "do you think the captain ought to venture out of the bay in such wea ther ?"

"Indeed, Sir, I do not know," he replied. "I am no seaman. All I say is, and all I trust to is, that we are in the hands of a Providence that can preserve us as well here as in our beds on shore; and as we are here, Sir, and not on land, by the disposition of that Providence, I trust that HE who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, will keep both you and me."