not at all comforting to see. Upon the whole,
it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a very weak
and impotent condition; toothless, fangless,
drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly
worth chaining up.

When the service was over, I walked with
the humane and conscientious gentleman
whose duty it was to take that walk, that
Sunday morning, through the little world of
poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.
It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen
hundred or two thousand paupers, ranging
from the infant newly born or not yet come
into the pauper world, to the old man dying
on his bed.

In a room opening from a squalid yard,
where a number of listless women were
lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the
ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning
—in the "Itch Ward," not to compromise
the truth-- a woman such as HOGARTH has
often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her
gown, before a dusty fire. She was the nurse,
or wardswoman, of that insalubrious department
—herself a pauper-- flabby, raw-boned,
untidy-- unpromising and coarse of aspect
as need be. But, on being spoken to about
the patients whom she had in charge, she
turned round, with her shabby gown half on,
half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not
for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish
sentiment, but in the deep grief and affliction
of her heart; turning away her dishevelled
head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her
hands, and letting fall abundance of great
tears, that choked her utterance. What was
the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward?
Oh, "the dropped child" was dead! Oh, the
child that was found in the street, and she
had brought up ever since, had died an
hour ago, and see where the little creature
lay, beneath this cloth! The dear, the pretty
dear!

The dropped child seemed too small and poor
a thing for Death to be in earnest with, but
Death had taken it; and already its diminutive
form was neatly washed, composed, and
stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I thought
I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall
be well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward,
when some less gentle pauper does those offices
to thy cold form, that such as the dropped
child are the angels who behold my Father's
face!

In another room, were several ugly old
women crouching, witch-like, round a hearth,
and chattering and nodding, after the manner
of the monkies. " All well here? And
enough to eat? " A general chattering and
chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer.
"Oh yes gentleman! Bless you gentleman!
Lord bless the parish of St. So-and-So! It
feed the hungry, Sir, and give drink to the
thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so
it do, and good luck to the parish of St.
So-and-So, and thankee gentleman!"
Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at dinner.
"How do you get on? " " Oh pretty well
Sir! We works hard, and we lives hard-- like
the sodgers!"

In another room, a kind of purgatory or
place of transition, six or eight noisy mad-
women were gathered together, under the
superintendence of one sane attendant. Among
them was a girl of two or three and twenty,
very prettily dressed, of most respectable
appearance, and good manners, who had been
brought in from the house where she had
lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose,
no friends), on account of being subject to
epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed
under the influence of a very bad one. She
was by no means of the same stuff, or the
same breeding, or the same experience, or in
the same state of mind, as those by whom
she was surrounded; and she pathetically
complained that the daily association and the
nightly noise made her worse, and was
driving her mad-- which was perfectly
evident. The case was noted for enquiry and
redress, but she said she had already been
there for some weeks.

If this girl had stolen her mistress's watch,
I do not hesitate to say she would, in all
probability, have been infinitely better off.
Bearing in mind, in the present brief description
of this walk, not only the facts already
stated in this Journal, in reference to the
Model Prison at Pentonville, but the general
treatment of convicted prisoners under the
associated silent system too, it must be
once more distinctly set before the reader,
that we have come to this absurd, this
dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest
felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet,
and accommodation, better provided for, and
taken care of, than the honest pauper.

And this conveys no special imputation on
the workhouse of the parish of St. So-and-So,
where, on the contrary, I saw many things to
commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting
that most infamous and atrocious enormity
committed at Tooting-- an enormity which, a
hundred years hence, will still be vividly
remembered in the bye-ways of English life,
and which has done more to engender a
gloomy discontent and suspicion among
many thousands of the people than all the
Chartist leaders could have done in all their
lives-- to find the pauper children in this
workhouse looking robust and well, and
apparently the objects of very great care. In the
Infant Schoo l-- a large, light, airy room at the
top of the building-- the little creatures, being
at dinner, and eating their potatoes heartily,
were not cowed by the presence of strange
visitors, but stretched out their small hands
to be shaken, with a very pleasant confidence.
And it was comfortable to see two mangey
pauper rocking-horses rampant in a corner.
In the girls' school, where the dinner was also
in progress, everything bore a cheerful and
healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the
boys' school, by the time of our arrival there.