SPEECH ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PEACE AND OF WAR, DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL RAILWAY, 1830.

LORD BROUGHAM.

WHEN I saw the difficulties of space and time, as it were, overcome, when I beheld a kind of miracle exhibited before my astonished eyes,-when I surveyed masses pierced through on which it was before hardly possible for man or beast to plant the sole of the foot, and now covered with a road, and bearing heavy waggons, laden not only with innumerable passengers, but with merchandise of the largest bulk and weight,—when I saw valleys made practicable by bridges of ample height and length which spanned them,-saw the steam railway traversing the surface of the water at a distance of sixty or seventy feet in perpendicular height, saw the rocks excavated, and the gigantic power of man penetrating through miles of the solid mass, and gaining a great, a lasting, an almost perennial conquest over the powers of nature, by his skill and industry,-when I contemplated all this, was it possible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded into my mind,-not in praise of man's great deeds,—not in admiration of the genius and perseverance which he had displayed, or even of the courage which he had shown in setting himself against the obstacles which matter had opposed to his course,—no ; but the melancholy reflection that whilst all these prodigious efforts of the human race, so fruitful of praise, but so much more fruitful in lasting blessings to mankind, and which never could have forced a tear from any eye, but for that unhappy casualty which deprived me of a friend and you of a representative-a cause of mourning which there began and there ended; when I reflected that this peaceful, and guiltless, and useful triumph over the elements, and over nature herself, had cost a million of money, whilst fifteen hundred millions had been squandered in bloodshed, in naturalizing barbarism over the world, shrouding the nations in darkness, making bloodshed tinge the earth of every country under the sun,-in one horrid and comprehensive word, WAR,—the greatest curse of the human race, and the greatest crime, because it involves every other crime

within its execrable name, and all with the wretched, and, thank God, I may now say, the utterly frustrated—as it always was the utterly vain attempt to crush the liberties of the people! I look backwards with shame, with regret unspeakable, with indignation to which I should in vain attempt to give utterance, upon that course of policy which we are now happily too well informed and too well intentioned ever to allow again whilst we live,— when I think that if one hundred, and but one hundred, of those fifteen hundred millions, had been employed in promoting the arts of peace, and the progress of civilisation, and of wealth and prosperity amongst us, instead of that other employment which is too hateful to think of, and almost now-a-days too disgusting to speak of; (and I hope to live to see the day when such things will be incredible, when looking back we shall find it impossible to believe that they ever happened)-instead of being burthened with eight hundred millions of debt, borrowed after spending seven hundred millions, borrowed when we had no more to spend, we should have seen the whole country covered with suci. works as now unite Manchester and Liverpool, and should have enjoyed peace uninterrupted during the last forty years, with all the blessings which an industrious and virtuous people deserve, and which peace profusely sheds upon their lot.

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY SWEEPERS.

CHARLES LAMB.

I LIKE to meet a sweep-understand me-not a grown sweeper -old chimney sweepers are by no means attractive—but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek-such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the "Peep, peep," of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise ?

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks-poor blots -innocent blacknesses.

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth-these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption, and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys) in the nipping

air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind.

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation! To see a chit no bigger than one's self, enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni —to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades!—to shudder with the idea that now, surely, he must be lost for ever!—to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight--and then (O fulness of delight!) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It must have been an awful spectacle certainly.

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip or splashed stocking of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than forgiveness. In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough—yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had happened-when the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth-but Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him!) in the March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman-there he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever—with

such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth —for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it -that I could have been content, if the honour of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight.

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips is a casket presumably holding such jewels; but, methinks, they should take leave to “air” them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess that from the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when

"A sable cloud

Turns forth her silver lining on the night."

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge of better days; a hint of nobility: and, doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and almost infantile abductions; the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions; many noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance the fact; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good fortune out of many irreparable and hopeless defiliations.

In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle, a few years sinceunder a ducal canopy-(that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a connoisseur)-encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets interwoven-folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius-was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost chimney sweeper. The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the

intricacies of those lordly chimneys by some unknown aperture, had alighted upon this magnificent chamber, and, tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw exhibited; so, creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard.

Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle; but I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what I have just hinted at, in this story. A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that description, with whatever weariness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions: is this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper incunabula and resting place. By no other theory than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it) can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable sleeper.

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper, held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to the mastersweeps in and about the metropolis, confining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at; but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was discovered in time to be no chimney sweeper (all is