We knock at the door of a cheerful little
house, extremely clean. We are introduced
into a little parlour, where a young artist sits
at work with crayons and water-colours. He
is a student of the School of Design. He is at
work on a new pattern for a table-cover. He
has learnt to paint in oil. He has painted the
portraits ot his sisters—and of some one who
I suspect is not a sister, but who may be

A nearer one
Yet and a dearer one,

and they decorate the room. He has painted
groups of flowers. He shows us one that was in
last year's Exhibition of the Royal Academy.
He shows us another that he means to finish
in good time to send to the next Exhibition.
He does these things over and above his regular
work. He don't mind work—gets up early.
There are cheap casts prettily arranged about
the room, and it has a little collection of cheap
books of a good sort in it. The intrinsic worth
of every simple article of furniture or embellishment
is enhanced a hundred-fold (as it always
may be) by neatness and order. Is father
at home? Yes, and will be glad to see the
visitors. Pray walk up!

The young artist shows us the way to the
top of the house, apologising cheerfully for
the ladder-staircase by which we mount at
last. In a bright clean room, as pure as soap
and water, scrubbing, and fresh air, can make
it, we find a sister whose portrait is down
stairs—we are able to claim her instantly for
the original, to the general satisfaction. We
find also, father, who is working at his
Jacquard loom, making a pretty pattern of
cravat, in blue upon a black ground. He
is as cordial, sensible, intelligent a man, as
any one would wish to know. He has a
reason for everything he says, and everything
he does. He is learned in sanitary matters
among other necessary knowledge, and says the
first thing you have to do, is, to make your
place wholesome, or you can't expect to work
heartily. Wholesome it is, as his own pleasant
face, and the pleasant faces of his children
well brought up. He has made various
improvements in his own loom; he has made
an improvement in his daughter's, who
works near him, which prevents her having
to contract her chest, although she is doing
very ordinary work. Industry, contentment,
sense, and self-respect, are the hopeful
characteristics of everything animate and inanimate
in this little house. If the veritable summer
light were shining, and the veritable summer
air were rustling, in it, which the young
artist has tried to get into the sketches of
green glades from Epping Forest that hang
near father's loom, and can be seen by father
while he is at work, it could not be more
cheering to our hearts, oppressed with what
we have left.

I meant to have had a talk with our good
friend Mr. Broadelle, respecting a cruel persistence
in one inflexible principle which gave the
New Poor Law a particular severity in its
application to Spitalfields, a few years back,
but which I hope may have been amended.
Work in the stone-yard was the test of all
able-bodied applicants for relief. Now, the
weaver's hands are soft and delicate, and
must be so for his work. No matter. The
weaver wanting relief, must work in the
stone-yard with the rest. So, the Union
blistered his hands before it relieved him, and
incapacitated him from doing his work when
he could get it.

But, let us leave Spitalfields with an agreeable
impression, and be thankful that we can.

THE CAPE AND THE KAFFIRS.

A HISTORY.

Six hundred years before Christ, Africa
was circumnavigated, and the Cape of Good
Hope, consequently, doubled by Phœnician
vessels, in the pay of Pharaoh Necho. That
was the same Necho who commenced the
design of a canal through the Isthmus of
Suez, which, some writers tell us, he
completed, but which, Aristotle says, he finished
only to the Salt Lakes.

The Cape, most probably, was doubled
twice, also, by an ancient courtier, to whom
—guilty of some offence—his life was granted,
on condition that he should sail round Africa;
but he returned with his task incomplete,
preferring death.

Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, re-discovered
the Cape, and called it " Cabo dos Tormentos,"
Cape of Storms. But the forcing of the
passage round it, by Vasco de Gama, in 1497,
which deprived Venice of her monopoly as a
commercial highway, and promised to give
new vigour to the Indian trade, was a hopeful
matter, and " Cabo de Boa Esperance "—
Cape of Good Hope—was, accordingly,
considered a more fitting name. The Portuguese
ships, sailing to the East, by this new road,
touched at the Cape for water, but abstained
from planting any colony.

The natives and the Portuguese did not, on
all occasions, meet as friends. In 1510, a
quarrel arose between them, which led to the
murder of seventy-five Portuguese, together
with the Viceroy, Almeida. Two or three
years afterwards, the Portuguese had their
revenge, when the fleet, anchoring again, put
ashore a large brass cannon, as a present.
The Portuguese had loaded it with heavy
balls, and fastened two ropes to the muzzle.
The natives eagerly swarmed about the ropes,
to pull their prize away; and a great body of
them being thus got within range of the shot,
the cannon was suddenly fired, a fearful
slaughter made, and the survivors put to
flight. After this, of course, the Portuguese
knew better than to land again; the Cape
natives were left to themselves for nearly a
century.

After the Portuguese, the Dutch succeeded
to the Oriental trade; and in about 1600, the