All used at any hour by night, by day,
As suit the purse, the person, or the prey.
Above the fåre, the mantle-shelf contains

Of china-ware some poor unwatch'd remains.

There many a tea-cups gaudy fragments stand,

All placed by Vanity's unwearied hands;

Nor heed the se Spartan dames their house, not sit they nor sew nor knit."(1)

Mid cares domestic,

The Poor in Towns.

"The vast mass of the population, paupers in the

strict sense of the term, reside in their own wretched cottages. (2)

"Our poor how feed we? To the most we give

A weekly dole and at their homes they live:"-(3)

This is a description of how the

poor live in the

Row of the Village.

"This in feeted Row we term our street,

Here i cabal, a disputatious crew

Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew:

Riots are nightly heard:- the curse, the cries

Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies; (1)Crabbe III. 296-7.(2) Walpole I. 183. (3) CrabbeIII.

283

While shrieking children hold each threatning hand,

And some time life and sometimes food demand:

Boys, in their first stolen rags, to swear begin,

And girls who heed not dress are skill'd in gin: Between the roadway and the walls offence

Invades all eyes and st. ikes on every sense:

The re lie, obscene, at every door,

Heaps from the hearth and sweeps from the floor,

And day by day the mingled masses grow,

As sinks are disembogued and kennels flow.

There hungry dogs from hungry children steal,

The e pigs and children qarel for a meal;

infants

There dropsied children wait without redress,
And all is want and wue and wretchedness:

See crowded beds in those contiguous rooms,
Beds but ill parted by a paltry screen

Of paper'd lath or curtain dropp'd between;
Daughers and sons to yon compartments creep,
And parents he.e beside heir children sleep;

See on the floor what frousy patches rest!
What nauseous fragments on yon fractured chest!
And round the se posts that serve this bed for feet,

This bed where all those tatter'd garmen ts lie,

See! as we gaze an infant lifts its head,

Left by neglect and burrow'd in that bed:(1)

These are descriptions of the poor in general, the

following may be cited as an example of a particular case The remarks are made by a servant by to

of destitution.

her mistress.

"The snow," quoth Susan, "falls upon his bed

It blows beside the thatch

it melts upon his head/

-He never sees a wholesome meal;

Through his bare dress app ears his shrivell'd skin.

He freezes as he moves he dies! if he should fall:

With cruel fierceness drives the icy sleet

And must a Christian perish in the street,
In sight of Christians?

When reach'd his home, to what a cheerless fire
And chil ling bed will those cold limbs retire!
Yet ragged, wretched as it is, that bed

Takes half the space of his contracted shed;

I saw the thorns beside the narrow grate,

With straw collected in a putrid state; (1) Crabbe II. 149-150.